New year

1. Become more patient

2. Workout 3-6 times a week

3. Follow my meal plan 

4. Have a regular schedule

5. Plan full studying days

6. Go to the lab Sun-Mon on a regular schedule

7. Cook and clean the house

8. Meditate everyday

9. Start the day early

10. Stop watching TV and spend more time reading, playing with Lola and Flora, drawing, etc.

11. Talk to my dad and my grandpa more often

12. Send postcards regularly (at least once a month) to my little brother 

13. Become more involved with social media

14. Develop my own project 

15. Publish my first article on my own research 

16. Start a new research project

17. Leave depression and negativity behind 

18. Maintain friendships 

19. Make sure I put time into my relationship

20. Organize my bookshelves 

21. Apply to jobs and internships

22. Do more networking 

23. Be more confident 

24. Work to become the best I can become. Support different organizations e.g.

When you know you're doing it wrong

Doesn't it eat you up to know you're screwing up... Living with high aspirations, probably impossible ideals. Knowing it's not sustainable, that you're hurting yourself, that you'll isolate yourself, that you'll drawn in your own shit. Knowing that you'll kill yourself if you keep living that way. After you realize, what is there to do... What is there actually to do after you realize.

You know that feeling when everything is going wrong and you tell someone you trust about it? That hope deep inside you that they'll cheer you up, make you feel better, especial, and intelligent despite that everything seems going straight into a shithole? It almost feels like a guilty pleasure sometimes, venting your lows so you can get high on compliments and support. I've been familiar with that feeling probably even before I ever went into high school. "I'm going to fail" while everyone else knew you'd get an A. Perhaps at the beginning I didn't realize how annoying it was for everyone to hear me complaining about everything which at least for them must have seemed pretty ok. I still have a sickening memory about me crying at a friend's house. My dad had told me he was taking away my almost brand new jetta and giving me a second hand chevy. I studied in a private school so to cut to the chase I felt embarrassed and I just didn't want it to happen. My friend, whose family consisted of her single mother and her brother, didn't own a car. I was crying and she was actually trying to make me feel better, she didn't judge me, she told me how hard it was for her to go to a private school when money was so tight in her house. I felt a special connection with her and I felt relieved to have her. She probably felt close to me as well at that moment, maybe she went to bed thinking that I wasn't the greatest person on earth but that she cared about me. She probably went to school thinking she'd try to support me despite the fact she had arrived walking and I was still going to have a car, but when she arrived and I gave her the news that my dad was just trying to hide the fact that he had actually bought me a new car. My very own car, a beige New Beetle which I had wanted for a while and which by next morning I had already decorated with a big pink flower which fitted perfectly in the vase next to the stirring wheel.

As much as that memory revolts me I have to confess that the past... lets say couple of weeks I've gotten to know a different side of everyone around me. Complains about how everything seems wrong, talking about my anxiety and fears, are now followed by words that support that reality. A reality that I was trying to hide from and as soon as someone supports those statements you've made you realize this time is different. This time you might actually just fail, this time you're actually screwing it up and hearing it from the people you love just feels like a fucking kick in the nuts.

At least having told you my story with my friend and the car makes it almost feel like payback for being such a whiny little bitch most of my life. Worse part is that I don't even want to do anything about it. This time I just feel like "fuck it". I mean I seriously don't picture myself doing anything else other than what I'm doing and yet I don't feel like doing what I'm doing. I feel so full of hate. I hate everything I do, I hate everyone around me and I obviously just hate myself. I hate everything... and everything is going wrong this time. Great.

Yet another breakdown...

Sometimes I just feel utterly incompetent. Feel every laugh, every stare, every glance, is directed against me. As if I could understand exactly what I'm doing wrong but I cannot change it, except for the fact that I can change it but I don't. That makes me feel so conflicted, so incompetent and sad. I want to quit, give up, run away, cry. Every motivational quote I had previously posted around me seems to be mocking me, as if saying "you thought you could never abandon your dreams, but you now have no dreams". I wish I could blame it on being a woman. Perhaps because I'm right now alone with only men in my office but I am aware that this is just another excuse, another mask. I feel devastated. I want to cry, I want to quit, I want to think it will be better but in two years it hasn't been better. I suck, I suck in my stupid phd... Ugh... I admit I did it only for the prestige of having one. Imagining too many things that were too good even for my ego, and of course, as it usually happens, reality never agrees with this imaginary worlds. I feel broken, devastated but I don't want to let go. At this point I don't even care if we publish my stuff in a Stupid journal or if we don't publish it at all as long as I can get out of here with a something...

Convincing Myself I'm Alright

I originally wanted to write a post in which I convinced myself that I was dumb. The reason I wanted to do this was because I thought that all this pain I was experimenting came from considering myself to be smart, thus if I was able to convince myself of being dumb, there would no longer be a dissonance between what I think of myself and what is currently happening in my life. 

I started reading a great book just a couple days ago "Mistakes were made (but not by me)" written by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. It is a fantastic book about cognitive dissonance. In a few words, we never regard whatever we're doing as stupid because we've found a way to justify it. Regardless of how dumb it looks to everyone, or how dumb it really is, we think we are right because we've mentally ran through all the possibilities in order to take the "best" decision. I thought it was all great until there was a part that got to me. Cognitive dissonance might also work the other way. If we start believing we're dumb, we'll start justifying everything around us that way, we'll also start distorting reality in order for everything to fit into our vision of ourselves. They give a great example about a woman who has a low self-esteem  and believes that she is unlovable. Then of course, she meets Mr. Right, he starts getting serious and she feels pleased for a while, until the dissonance hits. She will wonder what is it that he sees in her, she'll believe he's not in love with her but rather with an erroneous idea of her and as soon as he gets to know the real her, he'll dump her. That way, unlovable restores consonance in her brain. Right after that, the paragraph that made me realize that perhaps I don't think of myself as this bright scientist but rather as of what I REALLY think of myself, was the following:

"...Most people who have low self-esteem or a low estimate of their abilities do feel uncomfortable with their dissonant success and dismiss them as accidents or anomalies. This is why they seem so stubborn to friends and family who try to cheer them up. "Look you just won the Pulitzer Price for literature! Doesn't that mean you're good?" 'Yeah, it's nice, but just a fluke. I'll never be able to write another work, you'll see." Self-justification, therefore is not only about protecting high self-esteem: it's also about protecting low self-esteem if that is how a person sees himself."

I've always been told or I should say, I've always believed that talking about my success might make people envious and generate negative thoughts, thus talking about my success was a bad thing, something dirty and selfish. I never thought that it would end in my self-esteem being down by the floors. So I'm going to talk about myself in the best way I can, trying to convince myself things are Ok and that I will make it through because I'm a capable human being. But of course, since it's a little bit weird, I might just write it in a weird way.

She was good looking, despite of all the flaws she managed to find in herself. That's why every time she was walking and people would stare at her she would feel so uncomfortable, she thought they were mocking her, looking at her flaws. But that wasn't true and she knew it, because despite of what she told herself in front of the mirror, sometimes when she wasn't paying attention and she had an unexpected glance at her reflection, she would get herself surprised about how pretty she was. Of course she always found a way to justify it, "it's just all the make-up I'm wearing, just the way I did my hair today, just the fact that my thoughts are nice and nice thoughts always get reflected inside-out". However, I am beautiful and I shouldn't feel bad about it. I am allowed to be beautiful and I don't need to justify it to me or to anyone.

She was in grad school, fast track PhD in science, chemistry to be exact. She was convinced she got into the program out of luck, because she had been an exchange student there and her grades the second and third terms were really good, showing that she could make it despite the fact that she had a rough beginning. But of course, the admission committee was unaware of how easy those 2nd and 3rd term courses were.  She had somehow managed to convince herself of this. She had read a book about impostor's syndrome but it wasn't really good at helping her solve her problem.  However, I am in a competitive program and I got in it because I am smart and I have all the qualities that candidates require to accomplish it. I am intelligent, I have good achievements, I can learn and I do it because I want to do it.

Lately that hadn't been as much of the problem as the fact that she had changed advisors and that was something really hard to do. It felt to her like backstabbing, but it wasn't. It was a good choice and she should feel happy she made it because she wouldn't have been able to stay much longer with her other boss. It didn't matter whether things were working or not before or whether they are working now. She is intelligent, she will find a way. It is true that it might seem to her as if she wasn't doing enough, but she was doing what was right for her at that time and that is perfect. It is true, she was doing great work and learning at her own pace. Not only about chemistry but also about time managing and ego, about dealing with other people in an office and administering her own house. She was a successful adult, I am a successful adult and I deserve to be happy, I deserve to enjoy what I'm doing because it's ok, if  I don't I only harm myself. It's ok to be me and go at my own pace, enjoying any results that arise and standing up to other situations that might not be as pleasant. I am here to learn, and I know that if a 5 year old, or 10 or 15 year old, even a 20 year old me saw myself today, not knowing it was myself, I would be proud and I would be inspired, I would want to be like her because that's what I was working to become after all, and I am happy for myself, I just need to make sure I don't forget.  

Graduate school

I always thought graduate students were stupid. As an undergraduate I had pretty good grades, managed my time to eat, sleeps, study, go to class and workout at least three times a week. All the graduate students complaining about how hard it was and not progressing in their projects, talking to all the problems they had with their supervisors, well, I thought they were just plainly dumb. I thought that once I got into graduate school I would shine like a star. I would show them how great I was. I was willing to put in long hours so I was sure I was going to get results, I was going to get along with my supervisor, shortly, I was going to be envied by everyone. Before I started m program I even thought about reviewing all the articles from the professor I was about to start working with (probably still a great idea and a necessary thing to do), I even went as as far as to thinking about writing a short review about the project that could perhaps get published at my arrival (Ha - Ha). Reality hit in quite soon on that one, as I spent my last summer watching America's Next Top Model: British Invasion. I didn't worry. After all, that was my last summer. Once I got to my new university things would be different.

I had already met my advisor prior to starting grad school. I had done a year an a half exchange (total) to what's now my current university and I had her as a prof on my first year and when I came back for an additional term I worked in her lab as an undergrad. She complimented how good of a student I was and the great progress I had in the lab. She looked like everything I wanted to become. She was always dressed up for the lab, came in to her office at around 7am including weekends, had made what appeared to be lots of money after having worked in industry, drove a fancy car and was a bit of a bitch with everyone. Soon I realized she was really a bitch with EVERYONE, including myself of course. But I'll save that story for later. In summary I only stayed a total of one year in her lab before I decided to change advisor. Once I made that decision and went on with all the paper work, I thought that it was finally my time to shine! After all, everything had been so horrible in the previous lab because of her. It was all her fault. She was crazy. How could I even do anything having her as a supervisor? It was a miracle I was still in the program.

Well surprise, surprise, at least to me. It's been 8 months since I changed and now reality slaps my face even harder than ever. It wasn't the supervisor, or the project, or pretty much anything else except me. I was incompetent and I feel incompetent because, well, I am incompetent. I never thought about the emotional burden that being a grad student implies. I feel shattered. I made a complete fool of myself in my last group meeting by showing a half assed presentation about my last minute experiments. Because I knew I had to give this presentation I hadn't been studying for my class as much and my A's soon became C's. I wasn't even enjoying "my time off". My imom had come to visit and she wanted me to spend time with her. My boyfriend wanted to see me as well. Both of them being reasonable demands, but for me they just felt like a burden. I personally wanted to work out and rest because for some reason I was exhausted at the end of every single day. I wasn't reading literature, to be honest I'm not reading anything at all. I procrastinate when I'm supposed to study. I've been going out on skiing trips during the weekends, because I feel they are "well deserved" and I just wouldn't want to burn out. I arrive late to the lab and leave early. I look too much at my phone while in the office and receive one too many personal calls while at work. I am stupid. Despite of how smart I could think of myself I just know I am doing it all wrong and the results I'm getting are basically pity from everyone and everyone thinking of me as an idiot, but what else could I expect. I feel devastated. People around me keep on suggesting to "just change", study more, focus more, blahblahblah but I felt exactly as being constipated. I really want to do something, I want to work for it, put lots of effort into it, but then nothing, just nothing, no poop after pushing and pushing. Worse part is that all of this is public to everyone, my misery, my incompetence. It's not like its just you and your advisor and perhaps one other grad student that see you go through all of this. It's your professors, it's your colleagues and lab mates, research assistants, family, friends, you name it. You're no longer just judged by a couple of letters in your transcript, you're now judged for being you. From how much you know (which makes perfect sense) to until what time you stay in the lab, how long do you take for lunch, everything you do while being in the office and while being out of it! Most people tell me "you shouldn't care about what others think about you". Great advise. Except that you're actually living with this people. Somehow, looking at their stupid faces everyday and their advice and their gossip about you, it just gets to you. It's people you didn't choose to be placed with, because you never chose who your adviser chose as their student, you only chose your adviser, so despite the fact you hate them they become your family. Best part is that everyone feels about me exactly as I felt about graduate students before, just plainly dumb.

It's been an hour since I started ranting in here. I need to get back to work. I'm not sure if this will help anyone or if there's anyone in a similar situation but my gosh does it feel good just to vent out. Just in conclusion, I do feel that I'm stupid due to the choices I make about managing my time. This makes me feel miserable because it's dissonant with the self image I had of my self and with all the expectations I had. "Good thing is", I still have 3-5 years to make things right, and at least that something...

Mommy, mommy

Crying in the office is perhaps the most painful thing that can happen while at work. This time I just couldn't help it. My eyes started watering after my face lit up red like a light bulb. I wanted to scream and cry louder, bang my head agains my desk, tell everyone I hated them and break their things.

People are assholes. Pretending not to see you while sinultaneously walking by just to get a peek of the show. Fucking assholes. I hated them all and I couldn't help but to be miserable and weak in front of them all. 

I smelled like ham and looked like an idiot. I was disgusted of myself. I wanted to hide and be alone but my mom was in town so I literally had no where to go to be alone. That's why I went to the gym. Perhaps people coups mistake my tears with sweat and my face was prone to getting red anyway. 

I felt stupid. I knew that people around me thought of me as an idiot. I hated everyone, I wanted to be alone and the best I came up with was coming to the fucking gym. 

In my tantrum at the office I got compassive word from two others, my boss and someone I thought I hated but now I just disliked. "Don't be upset" "it's hard to manage your time. This is normal, we all go trough that". 

I feel disgusting. If only I could be good at something. Fuck if only I could just do fucking nothing and be happy with it. I wanted everyone to fail, as if their misery would become my victory. I wanted to see everyone defeated, as if that would renew my dreams and hopes. I knew I was stupid, at the truth is that was the hardest part to deal with.

Control

Sometimes I just lose control. It starts as a stupid complain in my head, a small thing that doesn't even bother me but I feel I need to exaggerate it in order to show how there's something bothering me. That's when I lose control and everything happens so fast. The mood swings. From neutral to angry, from angry to sad, from sad to disgusting. I hate it, and the more I hate it the worse it becomes. I feel stupid, defeated, I feel I'm in a never ending loop that I've created myself. I feel disgusting. I hate myself. I consider suicide, I laugh at myself because I there's not even a good enough motif. I feel defeated, disgusting. I wish I could be the best at something. I realize it's only because I crave attention. I want to be needed, I want to be the one. I hate myself, I feel stupid. I don't even know what to do. I don't want to go home. I want to hide ten feet under ground and come out only when I've calmed down. I want to scream to certain people, I want to be left alone. I want to study and exercise and eat less. I just feel disgusting. 

Nothing unheard of

The first time I heard the word pornography was when I was about 10 years old. My cousin was in the car with me and my mom. She was older than me, she was probably 14 or 15 at the time (I don't actually know how much older than me she is). She was telling my mom something about the boy that I can now assume was "her boyfriend". Apparently he had been grounded because his parents found he had bought a pornographic magazine. My mom felt completely uncomfortable and just moved on the conversation with "oh no, that's awful", "oh well, I'm glad his parents found out". Once we had dropped my cousin at my grandparent's house, I asked my mom what pornographic meant. She has always been really awkward about the whole sex thing. This was definitely one of those times. She got a bit anxious and angry at the same time and limited her response to "it's a magazine where people are naked in it". Although that was the first time I had ever heard the word, let alone having it defined in the most painfully awkward way possible by my mom, I had already been exposed to pornography 4 years before that day.

I studied first grade in an all girls catholic school. I have memories of it, some of them pretty vivid, but all of it just bits and pieces. I remember the brown uniform, I remember sitting with one of my friends on top of a storage room to eat lunch, the first time I brought in some water with colorful jellies in it, having a change purse shaped as a soda can, scratching my knee playing volleyball... and going to the house of one of the girls on somewhat a regular basis by the end of the school year. All I remember of her is messy hair, a younger sister and a mother that didn't care. I liked going to her house because we would see naked women on her computer. She had been much further exposed to porn by the time she showed me, I think she had also been exposed to pornographic films because of what she would tell me. We, or at least I, pretended to find the images funny just to see more of them. We would open them in paint and pretended to draw funny things on them. Ever since I wanted to make everyone feel about me the same way I felt while watching this women, excited and anxious all at once. It only hit me this morning, 20 years after it happened, that I started feeling sexualized by the time I was 6.

By the time I was in fifth grade I wanted boys to want me. I don't know if it was hormones, media, beginning of sex-ed or just the combination of all of the above but by the time I was in fifth grade I wanted to be a stripper, yes you read right. I just wanted the boys to want me. Luckily for 5th grade me, I was perhaps the first girl in my class to get breasts. Somehow I felt validated for the first time, special, popular and attractive to boys, even if I had to put bandages before leaving to school the days I didn't feel like being made fun of by others. Fifth grade was also the time another friend of mine discovered internet porn. I loved it. I got my computer full of viruses and my mom completely infuriated about the whole thing. Ever since it's been a roller coaster of watching it, feeling guilty and cutting it out for sometime, then coming back to it with despair. I actually remember thinking how much I would like to become myself a porn star by the time I was about 16, I thought I would make it big time with my webcam and myself, ha-ha.

Because of this pursue of being sexy, I began caring too much about my appearance. By the time I was 15 I had already undergone laser treatment to remove unwanted hair from my legs, arms and face. I had already tried several different diets. I had tried convincing my parents about getting nose surgery. Ten years later I have already looked into getting a vaginoplasty. My whole sex experience is directly standardized by porn. Nothing you haven't heard of, I guess. Enough studies have been released regarding how pornography harms both men and women. However, it was a surprise for me. It was a surprise when I realized I didn't feel like being loved unless I followed some sort of imaginary parameters I had set for myself. Truth be told, it was a surprise for me because I have read the studies, the suggestions, the whole porn is bad shebang, but not only had I never accepted it was having an immediate effect in my intimacy, I also didn't want to watch it any less. I guess it's like when you're a smoker and you know you shouldn't do it, but you want to, even more, you have to. I just never thought that need would get to me, to my love life, to the person I love. Why would it? How could it? It just didn't seem fair. Life hadn't been fair. I didn't want to have anything to do with porn, I was exposed to it, it was unfair! It can't just come back to ruin what I love just because it's porn. Except of course, it had. Now I can only wait and see what the consequences are, what is the other person's response to my whole act because I hadn't waxed, because I had a sore throat and I couldn't be loud, because I didn't feel desired and sometimes, that's all I had to measure my self worth...

The game

I didn't feel like being there. I didn't want to be seen, judged, bothered. I didn't want to hear their voices giggling from the other side of the office. I was tired from their boring faces and usual complaints. I didn't want to put in the effort to appear happy, productive, overall an average person. 

I was tired. I was tired from everyone's expectations of me. I was tired of my own expectations about myself and school and life and the future. I was tired of being in love of an illusion of someone,  just to find out that I didn't love them after all, just the idea I had generated of them in my head. 

My office was surrounded by glass panels and desks. Not even the slightest hint of privacy there. Not even to hide my face in between my arms and shed some tears if I needed to. I had tried talking to someone about this. About these feelings. He just tapped my arm as if I were something that needed to be pitied. He laughed at the way I was trying to show despair. 

After all, what was I doing about this? I wasn't leaving. I wasn't even trying to ignore the whole thing. Sometimes I just got overwhelmed by these feelings and they stayed in my head, haunting me for days. I felt I didn't know anything. I felt my opinions were wrong. I was convinced of my lack of knowledge would be eventually found out. To be honest, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just trying to play along, pretending I belonged. 

Don't come bullshiting me saying that's just the good old impostor syndrome. Don't come telling me that perhaps all I needed was just someone to talk to. Some days I'm just so tired of people and I can't withstand them, I just can't. But at the end I actually could. After all I came back everyday, making my expectations higher and higher: today I'll get my work done, today I'll show everyone what I'm worth. Fuck off, I'm tired of this stupid game. I'm tired of having to sit down and listen to people complain, listen to myself complain. 

If I am what my thoughts are, then my smile is nothing but a scar on my face. I don't want to be my thoughts, brcause that's just terrifying. I want to be happy, I deserve to be happy and loved and tolerant with others and funny and pretty and smart...At least that's what I think. The only problem is that I can't be all of that for everyone, because everyone'sperspectives of those ideals are not even synchronized. I had to stop measuring myself up because it was killing me. But how else was I supposed to know my self worth? Tell me whatever you want, but it's hard not to care about what others say, think, do. I cared! I had to see their faces everyday. 

Somehow something changed all of the sudden. Someone walked by, ignoring me and at that time it all felt right. As if it were all just in my head. After all, it was all just in my head. Suddenly my breath became calm again and I felt ready. Ready to start playing the whole game again. 

Just another day

I felt naceous. I could hear the ventilation going. The room didn't feel hot, it felt as if we were stuck in time instead. I could really feel my stomach. I kept on wishing to be alone. In front of me a girl whose hair kept on falling in top of my notebook. Next to me a guy who insisted on talking to me despite having the speaker directly facing us. Behind me two guys I wish I hadn't invited to be there and the rest of the places filled with people I just wish could disappear. Perhaps it was easier just for me to be gone. 

I went back to my office and I felt the same about the people there. Why were they there? One of the guys working seemed to have what could have been easily mistaken with pneumonia, yet he refused to leave, as if having to stare at his computer became easier at our office rather than his house. 

There were just too many days like these. I didn't like anyone. I wanted to be alone but not completely alone. I wanted to feel loved and understood and be able to lay down, leave all my armament behind. I was just so fragile. I wanted to feel strong. 

I kept on waiting for it to be 6pm. The door rang unexpectedly. Someone pretending to be nice to me made me feel better. I like being falsely nice to people as well. At the same time I hated people who were falsely nice. 

Perhaps it wasn't just the conference room that was stuck in time, there are just way too many days like these. 

I'm never popular

My opinions commonly get overheard. 

Monologue

I could never write about someone that I love. I feel I would be betraying them. Stabbing their back somehow. I could perhaps write them a poem and share that with you, I could tell you about how I love them, but not how they love me too. I could tell you if they didn't love me, if they didn't feel the same way I did or all about how they hurt me, assuming they did. 

I think that's not really fair to you. I don't think that's really what you should write about, or feel about what you write. The only reason I say that, is because the ultimate character of all your stories, the only one that gets to share their vision of their world and their experience, the protagonist in all of them, that person is you. 

I'm from a small town

He was tall, blond, blue bright eyes and with broad shoulders. His hair was less than a centimeter long. I noticed him because we were both teaching the same course that semester. At that time he was still dating that girl, the asian one. I didn't know that at the time, of course. I would glance at him every time he would walk past me. At the beginning of the term some students didn't realize there were different sections for the same course, and some of my students' papers ended up with him. When he gave them back I tried joking around. He laughed, but from my point of view he laughed at me, not with me. Soon I realized that he wasn't interested in me. 

Things took unexpected, and honestly unplanned, turns and a year after I had last spoken to him, we ended up in the same office. My new office was one floor above my old one and in the opposite side of the building. I went upstairs to talk to him before moving my things. He appeared to me as an introvert, something I hadn't noticed before. As I asked him what were perhaps stupid questions,

-do you have a kettle?

-could I bring my own printer? 

-are the people in this floor friendly?,

he found himself leaning onto the wall, giggling while trying to articulate his responses, and fussing around with the bottom of his blue hoodie. 

We weren't alone in the office. There were at least ten others. The woman that had been there the longest offered me to choose my desk, as there were two vacant ones. One next to him and a corner desk. She went on and on telling me about what he had said (apparently he wanted me to sit next to him) but that she had told him that that was nonsense, since the corner desk was much bigger, cleaner, and it wasn't surrounded by men. That's how I ended up at the corner of the office. 

One day I decided to bake some cupcakes. I had watched a YouTube video about how to put a red heart inside of them. I brought them into the office for everyone, but somehow I only ended up offering some to him, which made it look as if I was trying incredibly hard to get his attention. At the end no one touched the cupcakes and I brought them back home with me. Despite feeling completely inadequate and embarrassed, that was the first time he ever told me something about himself: 

- I grew up in a small town. We used to have a farm and everything. My mom used to have her own bakery. I grew up eating all sorts of baked goods but now it's just cookies that I really like.

Things got awkward after that day. We didn't even say hi for about two weeks until I forced myself to talk to him. Short talk mostly. It felt really fake. However, that got us going. He told me more about himself and I told him more about myself. We liked the same music, we were both into fitness, he wanted to become a doctor, I wasn't really sure what I was doing there. Thanksgiving came not too long after that and I invited him and some other friends to come for dinner at my place. He offered to show up earlier to help me out. Conversation seemed fake again but I was happy he was there. After dinner we played my favorite board game despite his hatred for board games. I could tell we weren't exactly clicking, but he was trying to make it look as if we were. He even helped me clean my entire kitchen after dinner. 

I don't quite recall how long it was between that night and his birthday. But we had gotten quite close. He knew about my family and I knew about his. It could easily be summarized as follows: I grew up as a rich girl in a third world country, while his family had declared bankruptcy twice. I was afraid of liking him too much. Not only because I had started to see someone outside the office, but also because he reminded me too much of my father. Small town, good looking, big dreams. I know it doesn't sound all too bad but I assure you it didn't end up well, for my family at least. 

I had suggested we went to a new cafe to celebrate his birthday. We were actually going there, I was quite happy about it as my suggestions were commonly dismissed. I bought him a box of fancy cookies as a gift. He offered me his coat on our way to the cafe because it was chilly. We had a fun time. At the end of the night we all went home and as I was getting ready to go to bed as I received the message I dreaded receiving from him "I had a fun time, soon it should just be the two of us". Somehow I was devastated and I wrote the following entry in my phone after saying I wasn't interested: 

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. I honestly hope I didn't. I like you so much. You're so handsome, I love seeing you smile. You're so sweet and you care for everyone. I wish I could caress you for hours and hours. I honestly wish you didn't remind me of someone that has hurt me a lot... Not that it's fair to imagine you'll hurt me as well, I'm sorry. I wish I could openly show you my affection without hurting you, but I can't. It crossed my mind I could go out with you while I still go out with the other guy, but you don't deserve that, you deserve so much more and to be honest, he doesn't deserve that either. Please forgive me. I hope you find someone that can love you as much as it possible to love someone, because honestly you're a fantastic person. I'm sure you'll find her. She'll be fantastic just like you, beautiful, charismatic, intelligent. Regardless, I will always love you. I wish there were many words to express the different types of love. I love you like someone I want to take care of, like someone I could listen to for hours while we lay down together on my couch. The kind of love where I could invite you to my house just knowing we're both safe with each other, not really having to say a thing. Not that I don't feel incredibly attracted to you, because I do, I just don't feel like acting upon it, at least not at the moment. I wish I'd be able to love you just like that. But my guess is not even us would understand what's going on and we'd get mixed feelings, where we'll probably end up getting hurt, and if anything, I want to avoid hurting you as much as I can. I don't know what it will be like for the two of us from now on, I guess especially if I ever do decide to give you this to read. Despite of what happens now I'll still love you just like that, and I'll care about you. Even if I become more distant, but that will just be to help ease the words I've said, so that at least it makes sense in our heads that I said no. The weirdest thing is that I felt attracted to you the moment I saw you. I felt sad the day I thought somehow I had offended you by offering you cupcakes and you stopped talking to me for a while (and every time I said something stupid thereafter). I know that we only recently started talking but I also realize that we have a lot in common, which naturally makes me like you even more. I wish you the best. I wish you happiness, true, long lasting happiness, to you and everyone you ever love, even in the smallest extent of love. I will always keep you in my mind and will always imagine that one day we'll become a song where we're at a party and we can leave everything behind, just to feel each other for the first time. Now you can ignore me forever (but really hope you don't) but at least you'll know exactly how I felt, maybe you now realize I was really this crazy all along and you can be happy you got away from me as soon as you did. So I'll just hope you'll forgive me and we can get back to where we enjoy seeing each other smile." 

I never showed him that, of course. After all we were colleagues. I was right though. Things got incredibly awkward to the point where we started plainly ignoring each other, and more recently,  he decided to start celebrating my mistakes, a painful reminder of my incompetence. I could only assume I had been right all along. After all I did know his type, just a guy from a small town, as he liked pointing out to everyone on every single chance he had. Despite still seeing him in my office everyday, he has became more of a stranger to me than he ever was. Last thing I heard was a rumor of him getting violent after having too much too drink. Asking girls to comply with his demands. Transforming himself into what most of us assumed was the one he tried to hide with giggles when he talked. I could only think to myself in an almost victorious tone: I guess I was right all along... I knew I was right... 

If life were a subject

She was having a wonderful skiing trip. By booking the hotel on discount 3 months prior to her trip, buying the ski pass and transportation from a discount company, and asking her parents to pay for the rest, she had managed to stay at the most luxurious hotel of the mountain. Of course she couldn't afford eating out three times a day, so she bought some food at the closest convince store and ate at her bedroom looking out through the window to watch the skiers go by. What a life. Enjoying a short holiday with her sister, living the life she never dreamt of. As a matter of fact, she had seen that same hotel advertised once on tele and imagined only the rich and famous could ever be there. But she was there, and she was neither rich or famous. 

Last night she had gone swimming when it was already pitch black to one of the jacuzzis that were outside. Snow kept falling on her hair and on her shoulders. After some time it didn't even feel cold anymore. Staring at the black sky, at the golden bright Christmas lights decorating the trees around, looking at the water fuming, she felt happy. She got out, shivering and laughing from the feeling of being outside, mid-winter, all wet and in a swimming suit. She got changed and went out for a drink. Came back to her hotel, slept, woke up, and after reading an email from her colleague, she only had one thought in mind: 

"Sometimes I feel like I'm failing life. Like if there was someone watching me, the person in charge of giving me my grade, and that person knew I was already failing miserably because I'm doing it all wrong. Somehow I just haven't done all the assignments and lectures for this subject. I should be in my office working. I'm just going to fail in life".