care-tags.org

so like the idiot/adventurer that I am, I bought some wholesale at-home chemical peels to do for fun. I've been doing them for about a year without any problems. I did a peel on Tuesday with horrible results - red skin, bumps everywhere. After all the redness subsided, I've been left with quite a lot of scarring. It looks like I've had some pretty serious acne problems my entire life when I've generally had very clear skin.

I think if this had happened a couple years ago, I would have been extremely upset. It's fairly visible/obvious scarring. Surprisingly, I've been quite zen about it. I barely even notice it when I look into the mirror despite multiple people at work asking me what's going on with my skin....I remember being pretty insecure about my appearance and such as a teenager, and I guess this experience is just evidence that I don't have that mindset anymore. Good feels all around!

Plus, this gives me an excuse to try out new foundations, and as a beauty/makeup junkie, that's pretty exciting. Woo!

pls delete no longer relevant :^)

sucks when you think you're doing pretty well and stuff but then you end up in a situation that makes you realize that you totally aren't.

Terms


My grandpa died last winter. The way the news came to my family was a phone call, and then to me by my little brother. I was in my underwear, wondering if I was going to my friends New Year party this year, or working.

Wait... (Italics) my grandpa? Dead?
I was never very close to my grandpa, but I always remembered him as a very traditional man who worked very hard and drank even harder. The cause of death, officially, was lived failure.
(Italics) a memory
It was Thanksgiving Break and my parents were in Mexico to visit family and routine doctor visits that my father was too stubborn to do here. My aunt was with us for the same purpose, and we were in a kind of boredom, the kind that seeps through and could kill you, if not careful. For one reason or another, everybody but me went to my Dad's restaurant and I didn't want to go. It was there that my grandpa called and said his words. Words I never heard.

While I didn't know that that was "The Last Time", the aftermath wasn't surprising. We had known Grandpa was in bad shape, and try as we might, we knew it was nearly his time.
What pissed me off was that something as important and ultimately mundane could occur in an everyday situation: people order dessert, have a lovely lunch, make money, speak their last words to their loved ones, etc.

A week later, I was in a store buying a funeral suit. It all seemed so surreal: why me? Why now? What I now understand is I refused to come to terms with my Grief and thought I could by being a rock, a role that I wasn't sure I could do. It tore me up even more to see my poor, beautiful mothers reaction. She was a very strong, stoic women who, when the doctors told her to just give up on her triplets, to abort them and forget the fact she had stayed in Virginia Beach General for a few months and move on, she adamantly refused. (Italics) she was going to have those kids, on her terms. I maybe saw her cry 5 or 4 times in my entire time with her. In the ensuing 2 weeks? 3 or 4 times. It broke me to see her like that, so fragile in the face of a fact of life. But what could I even say to someone going through that? To this day, I still don't know.
When we finally reached my grandpa's funeral home/morgue, the crying continued. Everybody could, but I couldn't. I simply Walked that fine line between comforting others and thinking "Am I a robot?"
That night, I realized something important. I liked it. After many years of hating life and being a wanderer, it occurred to me that while life is a cycle, I liked it, as a whole. I liked the cool winter air hitting my hotel room. I liked the dogs barking and I liked seeing the stars, and the endless void looking back at me that I would someday occupy. While I am against the idea of heaven and all, I thought how cool would that be?
(Italics) a memory.
It is Christmas, the year, I don't know. It was a while ago, and my family had gotten together at my grandpa's house. We were having a good time: singing Vicente Fernandez and eating good lomo and ponche. My grandpa, called out to me as I was going upstairs to sleep.
"Mijo, te quiero mucho"
The men in my family have a habit of saying a lot of things they don't or do mean, and I assumed this was one of those times.
I wish I hadn't.

I discovered that while we can't escape death, we can fill life with moments that take that pain away, on our terms.

My wallet has disappeared

i went to a college fair and all the requirements for the schools i actually want to go to were far more than what i have

what a drag

all i could ever really talk and think about as of recent is about how i'm getting married, even though it would happen in 2 years and maybe a bit more. i don't want to be that person but i guess it's to be expected for what i'm going through.

it has given me something to look forward to other than graduation, and i'm excited but a bit scared about what is going to happen in the future. even though i want to just have everything done now, i feel that this stage of limbo between robbie and i's relationship is more about how to understand each other rather than just learning how to be closer to one other. hopefully the next few struggles that he and i have to go through in not that much of a long time from now (which, unlike before, would call for federal measures) would be as rewarding, if not so even more than the ones that we both went through in our first year together.

I find it very hard to take up a new hobby or participate in a new activity unless I can get some sort of social validation from it(online and irl)

My new phone doesn't match my case. I feel irritated. I also feel like an ass that I feel irritated about this.

.

Just had one of those sudden "shit's alright, man" feelings and realized that I've been missing them in these last weeks.

girls who give mixed signals are the worst. i've been talking to this girl for 7 months and everytime it starts to progress she gives me the excuse "i need to work on myself" or "i need to be alone for a while". i've been alone for the longest time and its so shitty to think that this was all such a waste of time. i wish i knew how to approach people i dont know, but i just cant.

it's not a waste of time if you learn how to avoid overextending yourself in relationships. it sounds like she is getting everything she wants out of the relationship, probably knows exactly what you want, and knows she can probably continue to enjoy your attention or emotional intimacy or whatever it is without entering any kind of definite relationship with you. this is not someone who values you. no one has ever said "I need to work on myself" and been telling the truth-- it's a way for her to reject you without having to feel bad about it or have to worry about the relationship terminating.

Can we share good feelings here? I've been feeling good. For those wondering why my activity dropped a bit the past couple years, I've been hustling pretty hard academically/extracurricularly to make myself more competitive for medical school admissions. It gets kind of tricky when you have to do this after college; a masters is usually involved, still a lot of ass-kissing, friends/relatives wondering what the hell you're doing, and I'm naturally hard on myself so every day was more debilitating than the next. I've always tried to distract myself from the stress with hobbies and interests, thats really the secret to staying on a path I think. Message boards like this are useful for that type of thing. It was usually a rough time unless I invested myself into something new for the time being.

During the interim I was sometimes reminded of the absurdity of it all, the length it took. It seems to have become such a mankind effort to work so long and hard for a single goal; with any other species it seems to be considerably less. A lion, for example, spots a gazelle in an open field and works all of about 10 minutes tops to hunt it down. That was the hardest thing it had to do in a month. Goal established, goal met, almost no time in between. Why have we become so inclined as a society to draw out rewards over such a long stretch of time, with virtually the same feeling of achievement as a full meal - since thats all that is really required at the end of the day. I thought about these things when progress was stagnant, especially when this would stretch for weeks or months at a time.

Anyway despite everything Im glad to report I can close that chapter of my life because I've matriculated as an MD candidate in the US. I've noticed in addition to the obvious emotional pressure lifted, a physical component also seemed to depart with it. It's like I'm able to exhale for the first time in 10 years. Also muscles have relaxed, head aches have ceased, nights are slept through uninterrupted. After I found out I got in, food tasted better. The closure has really outweighed all of the original drive to pursue this. Im a couple months into my first year already and things are going well. I've been feeling good. Thanks for reading.

i just want to play 3rd strike with people that want to play 3rd strike

I have no friends at all here it is seriously so emotionally exhausting.

also my grandpa just died so shit.

Very sorry to hear about your grandpa :(

In regards to friends, I have few friends here kinda like you, but I just remind myself that I've only been here 1 month, and with time I'm sure that I'll make friends, and I'm sure you will too!

Me right now: Fuckshitfuck. Been experiencing a surge of emotions lately. Grieving my grandfather four years after his death (finally! I almost thought I was incapable of grief.), obsessing about a girl (as most teenagers do) and questioning my true value to my friends and close ones. I feel like a turd atm.

that shit sucks. Keep it up, it will get better. Although it might sound depressing death is a part of life. Stay strong.

living abroad for the first time is harder than i thought it would be. i think/hope i'm rock bottom on the culture shock bit, which means that it's all up from here, right... i thought it would manifest itself as me missing my parents, or a special food, or my cats, but really i'm just moody and sick and tired all the time and everything seems unreasonably more difficult than it should be. and (cat lovers don't read)

and something is wrong with the pipes under our part of the dorm and everyone is on national holiday for the next week so my room smells like defecation and i can't do anything about it

EDIT: why does Sknss have my avatar and where did this one come from??!!

so it turns out i need to spend another 2-3 semesters retaking classes to reach the gpa necessary to apply for my program. which means i won't get accepted in my program until my 4th year if i get straight As for a year

fuck my life. i'm smiling on the outside but hate my life

i hate myself for being so fucking lazy

shit

here's to 2 more years of undergrad and 2 more years of grad school if i'm lucky

I'm taking way too long to get over a two month relationship and it fucking blows. It paralyzes me. My school is too fucking small. I need to remain friendly with her for my own sanity socially and personally. I feel like I've had a seven month slump. I feel like a fucking high schooler.

Feeling better about some things. Wrote and published a personal essay that was really well received, and letting a few of my friends reading it and hearing their reactions was honestly really positive. In the essay I talk a lot about things I can't bring myself to say out loud or bring up in conversations with friends, but they were all really supportive. Feel more positive that I have in ages, when it comes to mentality. But things still get incredibly lonely and isolating pretty regularly. And I'll be stuck with this for another few months. IDK

just got back from a few days in montreal and i now understand why the weeknd likes it so much. it's a scary place lol

I've found it's become more or less impossible for me to open up to girls emotionally now but the weird part is I'm not sure whether or not I see it as a bad thing even though I think that I should

On the bright(er) side I've gotten like 400 tinder matches in the past few days and a stupid meaningless thing like that is enough to have me feeling pretty good about myself so that's kinda guap

Girl I know in-person chats me up all day through text, and I blew off her Saturday night for drinks because of my hangups, and tells me she's not over her ex anyways, then I said more than I should have, but we still continued to open-up and intensely flirt until one of us got hurt? Ugh idk

there's a boy here that I did a thing with but there's a boy 6,000 miles away who I'm in love with but won't see for a year. don't know if I should keep going with boy here.

ya

i have to get my wisdom teeth pulled and thats all i can think about
i have really bad dentist anxiety :(

ran into my estranged ex gf a couple weeks ago for the first time since we moved out of our place (march) and I'm having trouble brushing it off. sucks when something sends you down a shitty road mentally and you can't figure out what to do about it