Almost Interesting

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

Note: Kristen, you are the sole exception to #2. Never have I ever been inclined to think of you as fickle or undedicated.

1. When alone in my apartment I cannot wash my face or hair without locking the bathroom door because I have an irrational fear that someone is going to sneak up when my eyes are closed and stab me. Despite that, I can and do sleep soundly with the window to the fire escape open.

2. I don’t believe in supernatural things, yet I can’t help but suspect there’s something very wrong with Libras. (They’re all brilliant yet fickle and undedicated.)

3. I walk toe-to-heel.

4. I am naturally right-handed, but a learned ambidextric – I can even write well enough with my left to take notes in class. I prefer the left for most things including using a mouse, painting, and eating.

5. I sometimes raise my right arm into the air and do not realize it until I move or somebody else mentions it. I suspect that Ro sometimes ignores it just to see how long it’ll stay up there.

6. I never forget a birthday. I’ll forget your name but never your birthday.

7. I clean public restrooms.

8. My favorite books are all either 19th century fiction or written by foul-mouthed comedians.

9. I read War and Peace when I was 9. I didn’t understand a word of it; I wanted to be able to tell people that I read War and Peace when I was 9.

10. Sometimes I pick fights with people just to figure them out.

11. If I stand up too fast I lose vision in my right eye (and sometimes the left).

12. I always make excuses not to visit people when my weight is up even slightly. I find it mortifying.

13. Non-drowsy allergy meds make me sleepy.

14. I am afraid of Wii Fit asking me why I’ve gained weight (when applicable).

15. I find pumpkins adorable and feel bad when I cut into them.

16. I still color in coloring books.

17. John Madden’s voice enrages me for some reason I can’t quite put my finger on.

18. I used to have a crush on John Edwards (D-NC).

19. My favorite color is green and it bothers me that it is such an unpopular favorite color.

20. I have never in my entire life shoplifted or attempted to shoplift. I did steal $3 off my dad’s dresser once for lunch and paid it back with interest before he noticed it was gone.

21. Reality shows repulse me, and talk of them even more so.

22. My empathy is constantly on overdrive – I cry when other people cry or when I think others are or should be doing so. Just last week Ro told me someone at work lost a family member and I bawled my eyes out.

23. I once scared the guys at PC Club in Santa Rosa with my talk of how to kill Sim children using locked doors and ovens.

24. Because my mom refused to have me skip grade levels I found first grade excessively boring. I used to get in trouble on purpose so I’d be sent to the corner with the bookshelves. The teachers didn’t figure this out until I asked one of them for a different corner because I’d finished all the books in the usual one.

25. I sleep with a Cabbage Patch Doll by the name of Stanley whenever Roman isn’t home.

James,

The last time I saw you was in fourth grade, if I’m not mistaken. The last memory I have of you was outside room 19, hurt fairly badly. I can still remember every detail of that day’s encounter with you and how little compassion I felt when I’d upset you. Indeed, such affliction was the intended effect of what had transpired only earlier.

You see, you were always bothering me, picking on me, laughing at me. All I wanted was to be left alone. I didn’t realize that what you were doing was very normal for children our age with crushes as I had grown out of that phase a full three years prior. I had little empathy for others; all were like me or were deviant somehow in their actions. I’d tried hitting you, calling you names, telling you to leave me alone, but you seemed impervious to my efforts, as it affected you as though each insult were but water droplets rolling off a duck’s back.

When you said, “You know what, Sara?” and I, not particularly interested, puffed back, “What, James?” to which you pluckily replied, “I love you,” it was as though you, for some reason incomprehensible to me, had shown your weakness to an enemy. I did not hesitate to administer the coup de grace.

So there we were outside, you in tears and I, not simply not ambivalent, but vindicated. I’m so sorry.

You disappeared some time after this happened and, while I never forgot that which had transpired, it took a long time for the gravity of the result of my haste to injure you to inspire an epiphany. Perhaps, nay, certainly it was a taste of my own medicine which brought to fruition the deep regrets that I have borne for nearly nine years.

About three years after what had transpired between us, I fell into an unrequited love with a friend of mine. Not having the courage you did when you were merely a year younger than I was at the time, I wrote an anonymous note and hid it in his backpack. That very evening, at a church function, he was laughing and showing the letter to the others and yelled, “Hey, Sara! Nice letter!”

I was, obviously, mortified. What followed in my relationship with that person were to be two years of a traumatic love-hate relationship, blossoming into depression, and an eventual attempt on my own life. I’ll spare you most the details on these matters, only including that which pertain to yourself.

At the end of the aforementioned love-hate relationship, I sat alone in my darkened room and made a solemn promise to never inflict such pain on another as I had experienced. In that moment, it was with a rush of insight that I realized that I had already done such a thing to another: you, James. I wondered if this pain was the fitting punishment which the universe had selected for me for what I had done to you. You, surely, were innocent of my great crime and, hence, undeserving of the horrible way in which I had treated you.

Soon after this new awareness overtook me, I began to search for you in order to somehow make it all right to you. I searched periodically for you for years, to no avail. That is, until last night. I finally found you and yet I feel worse than ever.

I am not seeking forgiveness as I am in no way worthy of the peace such a thing should bring. I want to know if there is any way I can make up to you what my miserable, wrathful nine-year-old self had put you through. I don’t know exactly how deep your feelings were for that little girl, James, but if they were anywhere near as deep as my feelings were for my friend, what intense grief I must have caused you! I am sorry! A million times over, I am sorry!

Even now, I sit here drying tears on a rough piece of paper towel, I realize that the small amount of peace I may find for having finally said these things comes unmerited. I only hope that finally having read this may bring you the bit of peace I still long for from another. Perhaps you have long forgotten how that awful little girl made you feel that day thirteen years ago, having either become a numb place deep inside or maybe it has even turned to dust and blown away in the wind? Either way, you deserve my sincerest apology. If there is any way I can make this right for you, please tell me.

Sincerely,
Sara

I’m happier with my grades this semester, but I’ll never have that 4.0 again. *sigh*

I had a disturbing dream last night. It was the kind of dream which would worry me should I be of the mindset susceptible to superstitious nonsense. The parts I can remember went thusly:

For the bulk of my dream, I dreamed of doing my trigonometry homework assignments. I slept uneasily, as whenever I have a dream of this sort, my eyes feel dry and my mind simply will not rest.

After a long period of calculation, I found myself in a maze of short adobe walls sporadically lined with short, boxy hedges – a maze surprisingly easy to navigate. Not too far ahead, my mom stood stationary a little off the center of the path, engaging in conversation with somebody whom was not in my field of vision.

Immediately, I was compelled to remove my wedding ring from my left middle finger (where it is worn because I was much bigger when Ro and I were married) and sink my teeth into it. Once bit, the ring easily snapped into two pieces, yet held together by some sort of unseen hinge. I was alarmed at what I had just done and intuitively peered at whomever my mother was speaking with. Roman and she had just ended their conversation as I approached. “Look, Ro. Look what happened to the ring you gave to me,” I sobbed. Roman glanced at it for no more than a second and reassured me, “Don’t worry. We’ll buy you a new one; one that fits.” Then he abruptly turned and proceeded towards a proper hedge maze off in the distance.

I was alone with my broken ring; I examined it. I noticed that the break was not clean and that a sliver of white gold hung over the edge of the break, almost as if the ring had its own hangnail. Upon closer inspection, it was revealed to be a thin, silvery veneer. I tried a few times to catch the shred between my fingernails, and upon succeeding, I pulled easily unraveling the lustrous coating in spirals all the way around around all surfaces of the circumference of the loop. Just posterior to the shiny surface lay a dull, cardboard-color-and-texture backing. I looked to the band itself; the substance of my ring seemed to be entirely comprised of twisted, thin wood pulp. Acting on yet another compulsion, I placed the remainder of the ring under a running tap where it dissolved. I woke up.

The dream bothered me enough to tell Roman about it and to write this post. Though I don’t think dreams can do silly things like foretell future events, it still feels a bit bothersome. I’m chocking it up to all the trig I’ve been doing lately, nearly all of which at this point in the semester involve segmenting circles and spirals.

On the bright side, the dream made me want to finish all my math homework, which I’ve spent the bulk of today doing. I’m finding that I love mathematics more and more as I progress. Firmly rooted in the natural world, I used to become quite depressed with our finite world. For the longest time, I was convinced that the only things that matter are things which last forever. A great number of mathematicians and philosophers who have studied mathematical existence at length concur that numbers have a permanence outside our minds and cultures. Funny how I used to think that that beautiful something eternal was going to be something plain and simple. What deep beauty could possibly exist without empirical complexity and marvel?

So grades just came out for the Spring 2007 semester, and they’re awful. Just look at this:

I can no longer be proud of my grades. I suppose that I am just another shiftless piece-of-shit cretin doomed to failure. It really hurts; I could have done better. I’m posting this because I deserve the humiliation that being a public washout entails.