Unbroken Walls March 16, 2011

One day you come home from school and see a realtor in your dining room, showing your parents where to sign the official looking papers sitting on the table. Suddenly, your house is up for sale and you have showings a few times a week and then some papers are signed and a new place to live is found and then the place that you call home, where you laugh and cry and spend hours at night doing homework and drinking tea and playing with your dog isn’t yours any longer, and the walls your posters are taped to aren’t yours and the doors aren’t yours and the cupboards aren’t yours, and soon the stove will be used by different people, taking food out of your fridge and cooking it on your stove which is no longer even yours but someone else’s, strangers you’ll never meet.

Somehow this happened to my family, for the second time in as many years. Just as I’ve learned to love my home and neighborhood and even my daily hour long commute to and from school, I have to stuff my life into boxes and move on. The last time we moved, it was from my childhood home, and as I’d never moved before, a lot more nostalgia and loss was felt then. This time around, it’s more the memories I could have made that I’m missing. In a week I’ll have lost the chance to make the familiar walk down to the nature reserve, sit on the roof outside my window and stare out at the lights of the city, or even run down the stairs and slide on my sock feet all the way to the fridge.

This time around, the hassle of moving itself combined with a love of our current house means I dread moving, but I know in the end everything will work out. I just dislike the in-between time, the time when I don’t feel like I belong in this house, and yet don’t belong in the new one either. This house taunts me, pointing me continually towards the clock which refuses to stop counting down the few days I have left to live in my home. At the same time, the new one is big and empty, full of new opportunities, though the opportunities manage to look simultaneously inviting and distressing. The other day we went to the new house, and my brother and I ran around, getting excited over plans for our new rooms, figuring out how all of our stuff would fit. On the other hand, finding excitement and goodness in moving is hard to do, and I’m having to make an effort to filter out the negatives.

With my stuffed animals in a box and our pictures taken down, my house no longer looks like home. The unbroken walls are no longer mine, although they still watch me fall on my bed with exhaustion every night and find breakfast every morning. They remain the witness’ to my last late night homework marathons, meals with my family, and hours spent working on a guitar song. These lasts are coming all too quickly, but I will treasure them. In a few days I will have left my room and my home for the last time, and looking back is never quite the same as looking forward.

 

 

Childhood March 10, 2011

In my earliest memory, I am about two years old, on top of the world. Or at least on top of a chair in a dressing room. I fall from grace, and then watch as my mom tries to open the door with blood on her hands. I wake up in the van on the way to the doctor’s office, and then my brother’s curious face is looking over my own, asking about the stitches. My mom takes me home, and a few weeks later my dad removes the threads holding me together.

After that, the years passed, with only the odd memory sticking out, a fight with my best friend, walking home with my mom after preschool, lying on the floor colouring pictures, and then, around the time I turned six, the news that my mom had gotten a job with the government. At first, I remember only excitement, thinking that she would become rich and famous, not realizing the true implications my mom’s job would have on my childhood. She started work before my brother and I went to school, and ended after us, which meant that we spent weekday mornings and afternoons at my grandma’s house.

My brother and I calculated at some point that, without including sleeping, we actually spent more time at my grandma’s than at our own house. When I had a bad day at school I went crying into her arms, when my parents angered me there was always a sympathetic ear a few blocks away, and any boy problems always went straight to her. I know I drifted from my parents in those years, but it was often hard to find a way to talk to them. Most people seem to think their parents are scary; when my dad got mad at me, he slammed my door so hard he broke the door frame.

Eventually, as I got older and more able to understand the reasoning behind my parents restrictions and actions, I connected to my parents more, rather than hiding myself from them. Even so, as I went through the lonely years of middle school and then the hard years of high school, my parents were never able to fix my problems the way they could when a bandaid was enough to subdue the tears threatening to fall from my eyes.

Although I miss the days of preschool and a life unsure of the meaning of stress, and though I constantly have to remind myself of it, I am glad of my teenaged life. Some of the things I face were problems I distanced myself from when I was younger, thinking nothing of that sort would ever enter my life. Depression was just a word, drugs were what bad people did behind the world’s back, the military was only for people with no foreseeable future. Cancer, heart attacks, homosexuality, anorexia, suicide, teen pregnancy, drinking, death. These weren’t things I would ever see, they were for daytime TV shows and movies and people who weren’t me. But though getting older means that I do have to face these things and find a way through them, it also means that I have a way through. It means I have friends I know I can confide in, a brother who is there to talk, and parents who I can have serious conversations with. A piece of thread isn’t enough to hold me together anymore, but now that I can understand and trust those who are there for me, I no longer have to fall to see who will be there to catch me.

Colour In My World November 8, 2010

Sometimes I’m really grateful that I know how to use cool programs like photoshop and premiere (image and video editing software), especially when I can use them to make projects and get credit for it. Art is generally something that eludes me, but somehow when it comes to computers, I can imagine something and make it real. I’m surprised every time it happens, but I think it’s really awesome.

Anyways, I was listening to “Daughters” by John Mayer tonight, and a line from it got stuck in my head, repeating over and over and over again. And this image just appeared in my mind, so I spent a while creating this.

Locked Out September 20, 2010

*Sometime over the summer, back in July, I got out of bed in the middle of the night, walked over to my computer, and started writing. I’m still not exactly sure where it came from or quite what it means to me, but after a few months of working on it on and off, this is what I’ve come up with. I’m sort of working on chords and such, but school kinda took priority lately, so here are the lyrics at least. (I’ve also never shown anyone but a few close friends any form of poetry I’ve written before, so please go easy when you judge it.) Thanks.

If my mind is a building and the rooms contain my thoughts,
I lost all my keys and now I’m locked out in the dark.
I’m feeling my way around, but I can’t see a thing,
The blinds are shut and there is no way back in.

I run down to the street and I stumble through the snow,
And a yell deserts my lips, I hear it flying up the road.
So I wander down the street and I knock on all the doors,
But no one’s around and I can’t help but feel ignored.

Cause while I was so busy out there looking for my keys,
My family all lost notice and I think they’ve forgotten me.

So I turn down the next street and I try that one instead,
I rarely ever come here these days – something that I regret.
I know my friends have tried to help, but I couldn’t do the same,
And on this night I need them most, but they’ve all gone away.

Cause while I was so busy out there looking for my keys,
My friends all lost notice and I think they’ve forgotten me.

But there’s still one street, one house, and one hope,
My fist can’t stop knocking and more yells escape my throat.
I knock and I knock but no one comes to the door,
I get tired of trying and I can’t hide the fear anymore.

Then I fall to the ground and I try to stay composed,
I guess that I’ll just have to find my own way back home.
But as the sun lights up the street I realize where I’ve come,
I’m back at my own door – right where I started from.

Cause while I was so busy out there looking for my friends,
I lost all notice of myself but I think I’m found again.

Then I realize that while my keys seem to be lost;
My doors are all open, they never did have locks.
So I wander through my house looking for a familiar sight,
I wonder at how it’s changed – it’s like darkness turned to light.
As I peer through each door I see everything anew,
But the best thing I see is my friends and family too.

Cause while I was so busy out there looking for my friends,
I never even realized that they’d be right here till the end.

Back to school, and thoughts on moving September 13, 2010

I had to do homework this weekend. It’s a bit weird, getting back into the regular school schedule this quickly, especially since I’ve gotten used to the month or so of retreat planning/ leadership that starts off the year in talons. On my first day in Math 11, we literally walked in, took attendance, and got right down to reviewing factoring. Fun.

Other than the homework, though, (which is at least giving me something to do) I’m kind of enjoying being back at school. I know teenagers are supposed to hate back to school, but it’s so nice seeing my friends everyday, and having a regular routine, that I can’t really help it. I missed feeling productive. I missed having things to write on a to-do list – I missed crossing things off that list. I missed my friends, and discussions in class, and walking to Starbucks after school, and spending lunch hours lying on the field looking up at the sky, and fighting my way through the stuffed hallways on the way to class, and dealing with transit on a daily basis, and even the sound of my alarm waking me up far too early every morning. In short, I missed school.

In other news…

The search for a new house seems to have gotten off the ground – we spent most of today looking around at houses, all in the same general area we’re living in right now. Finding a house, as I’ve learned recently, is mostly a big headache. There are so many boxes that need ticking, and no house that we’ve found, or are likely to ever find, is going to tick all those boxes. So there’s a lot of compromise we’re going to have to make in order to move, and it’s hard to decide which of the houses we like enough to make them, and also where we’ll have to make the least compromise. And the fact that we’re living in the perfect house right now, and therefore have fairly high standards, really isn’t helpful.

Anyways, I was just thinking about this blog earlier this week, and thinking that it needs some new posts, and also that I should contribute. So there it is, and I hope you guys have a good week.

Ahh, summer ☼ July 28, 2010

In the past four weeks or so, I have…

Had my Japanese grandparents, who I last saw for a few weeks when I was eight, stay at our house for a month. I was a little worried at first about how it would work out, especially since my mom is the only one in our family who can speak Japanese. It turned out pretty awesome though, and I definitely learned that words aren’t the only way to communicate.

Been to Whistler, where my dad, brother and I got bike park passes, and my mom and grandparents went up the peak-to-peak gondola. I love biking at Whistler – they have awesome trails, you don’t have to push up thanks to their chairlifts, and somehow every time I go there I find myself able to do things I’d usually otherwise wimp out on, which makes me feel awesome.

Gone to Cultus and Alouette Lakes a lot to surf, wakeboard, and chill in the boat. The possibility of selling it still seems to be floating around, but the past month has made me really realize how much I love our boat, and I really hope it doesn’t have to happen. (Also, I did a 360 on my surfboard. )

Gone to Barkerville, Jasper, and Banff, for a six day trip spent quite a lot in the car. It was a lot of driving, but the scenery was really nice, and it was cool going places that I’d read about in Socials. Because my grandparents were paying for most of it, we got to eat out in restaurants all the time (which did get a little old after a while), go up gondolas in both Jasper and Banff (definitely the best part of going to each town), and, thanks to my non-Asian grandma, got to have “afternoon tea” at the Fairmont hotel in Banff. It was ridiculously expensive, but also really cool to get to go inside the building (which was very castle-like), and have really good service, and also really good food.

Been to Seattle (twice, actually) to go shopping, see the Mariners play, go up the Space Needle, go on a really weird but also fun bus tour (called Ride the Ducks, it was this WWII vehicle that could go on land and water, and we got to go in Lake Union in it), see the Museum of Flight, and go to the Pike Place Market. It was all really awesome, and cool to finally go back to the States.

Gotten a new iMac, a desktop, like the ones at school. I know I complained a lot about Macs in the past, but that was mostly when we needed more out of them than they were able to give. For what I want to do on it at home, it’s perfect, and shiny, and really awesome. (My laptop will eventually be given to my mom, once I get all my stuff off of it.)

Also, I’ve played a lot of guitar, sat around and read, ridden my bike a lot, slept, and done some good, relaxing, summer things. It’s been pretty awesome so far, and even though my grandparents have left (today, actually), I still think I have enough to do to fill my time for the rest of the summer, and I’m looking forward to it.

Making way for summer June 29, 2010

I started off the day waking up an hour late and rushing to school, only to sit down to the longest test I’ve ever written. Although there were a few bubbles I filled in at random, merely looking to see which letter hadn’t been used in a while when choosing, I at least managed to finish, and left after lunch feeling dead – probably too much time with my head stuck in that painful math world. On the skytrain on the way home, I decided to treat myself to an hour or so of TV before getting down to work and finally cleaning up my rooms.

My summer, or at least what’s planned of my summer so far, will be spent in the company of my Japanese grandparents – my mom’s parents – who don’t speak a word of English and who’ve never left Japan before. We have four bedrooms in our house and three that we need, which left me with an extra room, one that I’ve spent the afternoon vacating, cleaning both up in the process.

So when I got home today, and after my TV and guitar break, I spent a good five hours cleaning my rooms, starting with my second (guitar, desk, couch) room, and moving on to the ridiculous mess that was the closet and my bed, which had been serving as a temporary laundry basket, in my bedroom. Looking around me now, my room looks a lot smaller than usual, a queen sized blow-up bed taking the place of my old couch, one of my speakers sitting on top of my dresser, and my usually empty closet now full of shirts, my guitar case, and other odds and ends.

Despite this being the first thing I did after finishing all my exams, and therefore grade 10 itself, I actually found myself enjoying the work, finding lots of interesting things to look through, and I definitely prefer sitting in a clean room to a messy one. Simply the fact that I can now easily see the desk I’m typing at right now makes me feel a lot better in general, and it hasn’t been like this in a while, considering the time of year – there were a lot of projects, exams, and other things to wrap up before the year’s end. I also found a few things to do over the summer, deciding when I was cleaning up my sheet music that it needed to be organized and formatted similarly, and replenishing my bookshelf with Narnia, Harry Potter, and some fluffy books off my mom’s shelf – guilty pleasure.

So this may have been a strange way to start off my summer, but the excitement that’s building around my grandparents arrival in three days was really only solidified by my setting up my bedroom for them. I’m starting to really look forward to spending time with them and speaking Japanese regularly, as I haven’t seen or really spoken to them since I was eight, when I visited Japan for three weeks with my mom and brother.

My school year, my time in talons, and grade ten all ended today with that oh-so-painful math test, and my summer began with the surprisingly not so painful cleaning of my rooms. Although the majority of my summer is as yet unplanned, I hope to find lots of things to fill my time, and to see those of you girls who aren’t ditching me for your crazy epic summer adventures as much as I can. And to those of you who are ditching me for crazy epic summer adventures, I really hope this blog, alongside of gmail (and gmail chat), keeps us in touch, and provides an awesome place for us to put our memories of this summer, and beyond.