So, inspired by my previous post, I just spent the past 18 or so hours watching the second half of this season’s Ugly Betty. There were tears, there were laughs, I went through about every emotion imaginable. This show had much more of an impact on me than I first realized.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized why I loved this show and kept up with it even when life got so busy I stopped watching everything else (like Heroes, sadly). Betty Suarez, to put it simply, is my homegirl. She really is. She’s so bright, positive, and ambitious. It’s baffling. She studied English in college, just like I’m doing right now. She’s a woman of color, just like me, and I loved how the show treated her Latina culture at home both so casually and seriously. The series finale even had her moving to London with a brand new glamorous job, something that I’ve been aspiring to do. Betty ran a blog on the show that was about inspiring people and writing about stories that matter. I can’t believe I haven’t realized just how inspiring this show has been until now. I wish so much that I could pursue my ambitions the way Betty did so determinedly, that I can learn from the way she handled all the adversities that came after her.

So thanks for the inspiration, Betty Suarez and co., and no props to you ABC for canceling one of THE best shows that was on your roster. It’s bad enough Lost is ending this year…

I used to watch a lot of TV. Religiously. I watched Grey’s Anatomy, Lost, Charmed, Heroes, everything…every week I watched the new episodes. I was dedicated.

And now? I don’t watch anything. I waste my time watching stupid shit that lowers my IQ like the stupid reality shows on VH1. And the one night I need to watch the Bulls, because they’re playing the Celtics and this could possibly be their last home game of the fucking season, and I can’t. I’m sad. Tomorrow’s the last night of Ugly Betty, and I can’t even watch it because I’m like 8 episodes behind.

Where did that dedication go?

Update: I, uh, edited some stuff out of this post because at the time I was inebriated…

Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of music from my adolescent years. Replaying all my old CDs (Avril Lavigne’s Let Go and Hoobastank’s The Reason in particular), YouTubing “classics” from when I was an angst-ridden 14-year-old just trying to figure out what was going on with my life… And you know what I realized? I’m not just reliving memories and moods from my younger years — I think I’m actually living them again. Is this how life’s going to be? Cycles of emotion, change, experience, everything that goes along with the territory of being a human being over and over again?

The past 3 or 4 days have felt like a vacation for some reason. I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to another week of classes and homework and living day to day as if a bomb was ticking off somewhere. My internship interview last Friday went really well. I totally wasn’t expecting it to be a breeze, especially considering my low self-esteem and history of rejection. But I hit it off with my two interviewers (at least, that’s what I thought), and hopefully something good will come out of it in the coming week or so.

Life seems to have steadied itself for the time being. Being at home this weekend was refreshingly and surprisingly therapeutic. It was one of those ordinary, plain kind of weekends at home that you know you should cherish because they come so sparingly nowadays. I bought my brother Final Fantasy XIII for his birthday, and it looks so wicked but at the same time made me feel super nostalgic for the more classic PS/2 games (VII-X). Which gives me an idea. I have VIII with me here at school…

When I got back last night, I found out my roommates had bought a bottle of Bacardi 151. I was sincerely shocked.

They wanted to make a certain drink that Amanda found out about recently, and the 151 was one of the ingredients. That was OK with me, but apparently they didn’t realize that that particular Bacardi was FLAMMABLE with an alcohol content of 75.5%! I don’t know how we’re ever going to finish it. I can’t even fathom the idea of taking a shot of it straight up.

So now that I’ve finished the marathon of school/work/everything-else business that has been plaguing me for the past 3 days, I’m taking this opportunity to ramble more about my life rather than getting some zzz’s like I really should be doing instead. And I’m going to really need those zzz’s, because the hell isn’t over for me yet. I still have to prep for my internship interview on Friday and do responses for Coriolanus (which, incidentally, I ended up liking, even though I generally favor Shakespeare’s comedies over his tragedies) and finish my reading and WHY OH WHY DO I ALWAYS END UP BITING OFF MORE THAN I CAN CHEW? My eyes are literally drooping as I type this, and I’ve already had quite a number of typos tonight as I was trying to type up my final paper proposal for ENGL 461. Word was starting to look like Christmas vines, what with all the red and green wavy lines popping up at every corner.

You know that feeling where you have so many decisions to make but you can’t make them yet because there are extraneous factors that still need to be resolved? That’s me. Everything, right now, is hinging on this internship interview on Friday. Of course, I’m nervous as hell because one would be for any job interview, but just the fact that I feel like I’m failing in my career (which hasn’t started yet) as a workingwoman already isn’t helping. I think I’ve had more than my fair share of rejections in the past year, and this would probably be the biggest rejection ever, should I not get the internship.

*slaps self* I must stop talking like this. Insecurity and lack of confidence is probably what would get me rejected in the first place. Again, I must stop being so insecure and be hopeful. Be hopeful.

I haven’t made my “To Do” list for tomorrow yet. This should be cause for panic. My books and notes are strewn all over my room right now, as well as my clothes since I’ve been rotating through the same sweats and shirts all week. I’m surprised I even had time to cook today. I haven’t had the heart yet to plow through my frozen meals, because I know that once I open one package of microwaveable wheels and cheese I’ll end up eating all the rest too, and because of that I somehow scrounged up fried rice and barbecue chicken in about half an hour earlier tonight.

I don’t feel like doing anything anymore. I guess I’ll just go to bed.

Sometimes I wonder why I choose to live with the pain. Why I feel like it’s better to suck it up than to find a solution to the problem. When you adopt a philosophy of sticking with the status quo, how are you supposed to deal when the status quo isn’t exactly so ideal?

I’ve never been a person who took kindly to change. Sure, there were some changes in my life I welcomed with open arms, but for the most part I’ve hated change. But I’m beginning to question myself. Is it really worth all the pain to keep change from happening? I’m at a time in my life where I should be blossoming, emerging as an independent, self-sufficient adult. Right? Why is it that I feel absolutely helpless, powerless?

Fear is such a powerful concept. I don’t even know what to make of it. Is it an emotion, a feeling, an entity? All I know is that I’m filling up with it. A fear that spans dimensions, indefinite darkness. It’s drowning me from the inside out. Fear of the future, fear of what the past has done that’s lead to this ugly present. And the guilt. Tremendous, overwhelming guilt. The what ifs, the regrets. There’s a burdening pressure to submerge myself in blame. There’s an agonizing feeling that had I been less selfish, had you I things differently…then I wouldn’t be at fault for the emotional pains and self-destruction of another person. It hurts even more when you realize you may be responsible for the miseries of someone you only recently realized you loved and couldn’t live without.

But it’s too late. It’s too late to make the right changes, and now I just have to find a way to withstand the terrible ones, the ones I have both control and no control over.

If there was a way I could trade in some personal pains for this one, this emotion I’m trying so hard to describe in this entry, I would do it in a heartbeat. The years of adolescent angst, the torment, the petty boy problems I’ve experienced in the past…those pains can’t compare to the incredible hurt of this one. I have control over my own personal emotions, but when you can’t control the feelings and actions of others — when you have that sense of complete helplessness — then the hurt is magnified tenfold and you know you’re defeated. Truly, completely defeated.

A few weeks ago, when I tried describing this pain that I’ve held secret inside for years, I was reassured with a “These things just happen, it happens to everyone” kind of comment. And it’s true, I suppose. I know I’m certainly not the first person to have to deal with this kind of pain, I know it afflicts everybody, even those, like me, who thought life could be normal. There are millions of examples of the kind of trauma I’m holding inside, splashed across newspapers daily.

But still…why does this have to fucking happen in the first place? Why do we have to be subjected to these incredibly testing experiences? It doesn’t change the fact that these things are happening and affecting me. And others. That’s the part that probably hurts the most. I can take the pain. I can handle my own trauma. But when the most important people in my life have pain and I have no control and I can’t do anything about it…it magnifies my own pain and makes it incredibly unbearable.

I have no idea where to go from here. I don’t know what to do. Every time I try to rationalize the situation, I only end up feeling more stupid. I don’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. I don’t know what’s coming, and at the same time I am incalculably terrified of what seems to be the inevitable. I don’t know how to take care of things anymore.

I’m so lost. My whole world has been shaken, once again, and with each disastrous occurrence I feel even more of a useless piece of flesh. I am so fucking lost.