Love... or something disguised as it.

Wow, only two days with a blog and I'm already on my fifth entry. Can you tell I'm making up for lost time?

Anyways, as I said before, whenever I come home I end up thinking a lot. I tend to do a lot of reflecting in general, but this house makes it go into overdrive. During the first few days, I usually think about UCLA, since I was in that mode for so long. But as the environment begins to set in, with the old yearbooks side-by-side with English books I read for 11th grade honors English, with all the posters and paraphernalia from all the theatre shows I did, I start to think about my high school days again, and all the drama I had left unresolved here. And a majority of it came from a big huge dose of a broken heart.

You have to understand that my high school days went downhill ever since the middle of my junior year. At that time, I had finished my last play with our director Mr. Hooke (who did an absolutely amazing job, considering the small resources we had), I was the lead in "Black Elk Speaks", a play adaption of both the biography "Black Elk Speaks" and "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee", which to this day was one of the most amazing roles I ever had the honor to perform, and I just became an upperclassperson. Things were pretty swell.

But then Mr. Hooke left, and in all honesty, the quality of the plays went down, pressure to get into college went up, and the school just started feeling smaller and smaller. While these were natural growing pains, things just seemed to become exacerbated when it happened the middle of my senior year: my first relationship.

Growing up with an immigrant mentality from my parents, I figured that as long as I tried hard enough, things would work out. And for this relationship, I tried. Really, really hard. But to make a long story short, stuff happened, and my pleas for a restoration of a friendship that had once existed (prior, we had been good friends for almost two years) were denied.

The strange thing about it was that it wasn't just myself, but all my good friends had been going through some sort of relationship trauma our senior year. And none of us could understand it; all of us were really well-meaning guys that didn't want to hurt the people we cared about. And what we got in return was a helluva lot of profanity, or worse, the "you don't exist" attitude. I got the "you don't exist" treatment.

And there were other examples where feelings of attachment seemed to fuck us over. There was another girl (let's call her Sara) who I had become good friends with, and she was growing a liking to me. But I also knew that one of my good guy friends, (let's call him Bill) had a thing for her. I knew that Bill had asked Sara to the prom, and she had turned him down. I also knew that Bill had broken up with his gf a few weeks prior. And wouldn't you know it, afterschool, Sara asked me to the prom... in front of Bill.

You know what happened? Bill went into seizure.

Yes, you heard me, Bill went into seizure. Fucking scary. It was at that point I was like, FUCK THIS ATTRACTION SHIT, IT CAN'T BE WORTH THIS. (I also came to realize that Sara, in many ways, was just clueless about being sensitive about relationship trauma, 'cuz when she got a bf, all she could talk about was how happy she was, while I was still trying to get over my ex. I then stopped talking to Sara.)

Oh yeah, and I didn't go to the prom with Sara.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not gonna taut myself in saying that I did everything right. What made the whole thing worse was a thing called "My Pride", and I had a whole lot of it. In the end, if I had just swallowed my pride and moved on, most of this trauma would've never happened. For the most part, I feel like I have moved on, but the fact that I haven't been in a relationship since that time leaves a lingering, bitter aftertaste.

And so is my history with "love." And so a few things came out of that period of my life that shape me into the man you know today:

1) I re-dedicated myself to work and school.
I was doing so much better when I had just focused on those to things, and I found that the relationships I made that revolved around those things were much more stable than anything involved with "love".

2) I grew to completely detest cutesy couple shit.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not against couples per-se. It's just that I only come to respect couples that can still act like NORMAL PEOPLE IN PUBLIC. You know, the folks who don't make you feel like you're a 3rd wheel, that don't have to be in constant contact with one another, that don't need to have to express their "love" every hour, that don't need to keep reminding each other that they "love" each other, etc. Couples who are confident in their love, like those that live in my complex, I've come to respect; as for those who need to make an exhibition, get a room. Special moments between two people are exactly what they're described to be, between TWO people, not THREE.

3) I was going to work on being myself and just let folks who naturally drifted my way, well, drift my way.
I wasn't going to take any sort of initiative with romance; I wasn't going to force anything. I was just going be the best me I could be, and let the people fall where they may.

4) I would make certain that my next partner would have to understand that school, family, and community service, would all be on a higher priority than her.
I know that sounds hella cold, but honestly, I wouldn't expect her to put me within her top three priorities either. Those are my passions, and my next partner would have to respect those passions, because I wouldn't expect myself to change them in the near future (just as I would respect her priorities).

And so for better or for worse, that's where I stand. Where do you all stand on this thing called "love"? Let me know. I need the research.