A Little Useless

My life has come to something of a standstill.

I'm not really doing anything with it, at least not in the "American" way of doing things. Like having a job or going to school or doing "something productive." It's not that great for my self esteem.

Oh I'm doing something alright. I've decided to stay home with my mother and put off grad school until she fully recovers from the cancer. Thank God she's well along that road now, much better than she was before.

There's been significant shrinkage of the tumor, and she can eat normally again. She's sleeping in her own bed instead of in an armchair, and she's been taken off the fluid restriction that she was on. Her hair has stopped falling out and is starting to grow back, and she's generally a lot happier.

I'm generally a lot happier, too...

She also celebrated her 54th birthday last Wednesday. =) Happy birthday, Mom.

We've settled in pretty nicely to the house, and I did most of the decorating, although there was one evening where we all pitched in and made the living room and dining room look pretty.

I like it here.

I'm quite content.

Except....I feel kind of useless.

It's all the fault of American, capitalist advertising, I suppose. Broadcasting the idea that a woman should be out of the home working and contributing to the society in such a way as to not be there for her family.

I'm taking care of my mom, helping her out and the like, but because I don't have a job or anything really to show for my six years of college, I feel like I haven't amounted to anything.

In the meanwhile, there's things I'd like to do now that I'm at home all day. I'd like to take up learning ballet and the guitar, but there's not time for that. I mean, there is, but I can't seem to find it.

Someone once said that everyone has the same amount of hours in a day, it's how you spend it that's up to you.

That's true, I guess. But I still feel so stunted.

I've been really sad today. I can't give you a good reason except thoughts like those I've jotted down above have been foremost in my mind all day. I cried a bit.

Okay, a lot.

Stupid me. My mom says I'm doing the most important thing there is, which is helping someone's (her's) life be easier, but I still feel ... useless.

Like I'm in a rut and can't get out and I'm spinning my tires uselessly. Notice the recurrence of the word "useless?" It's showing up a lot.

*sigh*

I'm going to go help prepare dinner so that I'll be a little bit less useless.

Does that make me crazy?

I think I might be losing my mind.

I'm an awful person. Why should God let hardships come if he knows they're going to make me into a worse person? So he can sit back and laugh when my demise comes?

The things I think of doing...of saying...I'm really a terrible person.

If my mother knew half the things I think (and somehow refrain from saying) whenever she frustrates me, she'd give up and die. She wouldn't want to live.

If my dad knew, he'd disown me and throw me out of the house.

Does any of it even matter anymore? I don't think God cares except to be mad at me. He's probably just given up on me. Seems like everything I'm doing or thinking or saying is wrong, un-Christian-like.

I don't feel like living.

But my parents have made me afraid to die, because the earlier I die, the longer I'd have to burn in hell.

My cat is missing.
I'm scared. Worried, is more like it. We just moved here not too long ago and I'm just ...worried. There are at least three little brats that live next door, and the road is right in front of our house.

I have a weight sitting in my stomach.

=(

an hour later...

he came back.
Thank God, he came back.

summer stuff

It's been a while since I've blogged.

In the meanwhile, we've moved, I've completed all the learning days of a summer course (the third midterm is tomorrow and the final on wednesday) and commenced being the housekeeper/caretaker of our new home while my mom is recovering/being really....taxing.

It's all pretty taxing. But why should I complain? If all that happens in my life is taxing and trouble and difficulty, maybe that's all my life is.

Sucks, that.

I'm sitting at the table right now by the vending machines with my study group; there's four of us regulars...Estefania, Stephanie, and Aamirah. We get along pretty well and study well together. I'm just distracted today. Really tired. Sleepy, even.

I've tried eating, drinking water, listening to dubstep and christmas music and pop music and rap, and nothing wakes me up. Not for more than ten minutes at a time though. It's a lot to remember, all these reactions. There's carbohydrates and amines and phenols, proteins and amino acids. And that's just going to be on tomorrow's midterm.

Everything is going to be on the final next Wednesday.

Ah well. I did well on the last midterm. Hope I can just pass this course so I can finally know that I've really graduated. So I can hold my diploma in my hand and know that I've actually accomplished something with the last six years of my life.

One day.

One.....day.

P.S. I'm also finally reading Wuthering Heights. It's terrible and great at the same time. It's engrossing, but terribly so in the sense that none of the characters are happy and they're all full of vice. To the extreme. But I can't put it down. =)

Nothing Special

To go from being a person's whole world,
to being less than nothing
is nothing special.

It happens all the time.

Even in the folds of the browned pages,
the ones I turn over to escape
from this place.

It happens on the flickering reel,
the images jumpy and scattered
with age.

The story repeats itself, playing back again
because we never learn
or never seem to, anyway.



It's a strange sensation, sort of like
your chest was once full,
warm and tight.

There was knowledge and safety.

But when it's on the other side of the typefont,
the other side of the reel,
somehow it's odd.

Different.

Worse.

There is no happy ending to expect,
thirty minutes down the line, or
fifty pages later.

And so,
we trudge on, nothing special,
because we can do nothing more.

Wednesday afternoon

I went to church today. Out in the city. I think it was called Convent at the Crossroads or something...it's on the upper West side. Really old building - the whole neighborhood is old, in fact. 1800's type of old.

Pretty cool. There was a noon service and I wanted to see what the inside of the building looked like, so I went.

Nice people.

I guess I just have to keep holding on. That's what the message was about.

But I've been deregistered from my summer course due to non-payment and have until tomorrow to come up with the funds. I would have BEEN had the funds like last friday, had it not been for the idiotic school not accepting VISA. Who doesn't accept VISA? Like really?

Piss me off.

Sigh.

I....am....exhausted. And what on earth is NBS? It's some reaction I need to know how to use. I'll have to google it. But it seems like everything is working against me.

I need to go back out and deposit my check in the bank, draw out $300, hope that my dad can come up with $300 more by tonight, and....the bank is so far away.

It's actually really close. It's five minutes away by cab. But I don't have $4 to spare to get there and back. That leaves either a 25 minute walk (exhausting) or a 20 minute longboard ride (murderously exhausting).

I guess I'll go dig for some spare change.

finally

He finally admitted it.

That he can't do long distance. That he doesn't think he's what I'm looking for. That he doesn't know what he's doing with his life.

That makes two of us.

At least it's all out there now. I told him I was okay, and I was, but then I cried afterwards. I cried the entire next day, in fact. Literally. Almost non-stop. The whole darn day. That was my graduation day. And then the day after that. It all sucked, really.

It's also weird that it's over. We barely talk now. Not in a bad way, I don't think, but just...I guess this is what it was like before we were "more than friends?" It's been almost a year of us talking every single day and every single night....and now, nothing.

I've hidden away from facebook and social media until I'm more or less okay. A little worse for the wear, but I don't randomly get the urge to burst into tears at the thought that there will never be a Norah Nykole. Dangit. That was a really pretty name.

Also, I did fail organic chemistry. So now I'm going to take the course at a college in the city. It's just as far of a commute as to my alma mater, but at least I can use a Metrocard and pay $5.00 round trip instead of $19.50. Also, the school looks like Hogwarts.

Literally.

We got the keys to our new place today, and went over there to look at it. I've decided not to take the attic after all, since you have to go through the master bedroom to get to it. It is realllllly nice though. But the room that I'm going to take has the most amazing closet/cupboard space I've ever seen. It reaches to the ceiling. There's room for shoes. There are WINDOWS!

Sorry, but I'm a bit excited about windows. We've spent the past two years living in a basement, and I've spent the past one year with no sunlight at all coming into the tiny window in my bedroom.

Now I'm going to have TWO windows.

Zomg.

One teeny, tiny thing.

My room is pink. -____-

Pink.

Yes. Pink. *sigh*

A weird, rosy, can't-get-any-girlier pink.

I'm too lazy to paint it, though. If I could, I would do it a mint green. I'm loving green lately. Dangit! Why pink? All the bedrooms are pink, as a matter of fact. And so is the living room and dining room. But it's okay down there, just...not....upstairs.

Oh yes!

We have an upstairs. And two bathrooms. And an eat-in kitchen. And a finished basement, which I have yet to see.

But the lighting in the upstairs bathroom (which also has a window!!!!) is amazing. Like, perfect. Like, I'm going to have the most fun ever doing makeup in there, and hello, YouTube! It's the perfect lighting for making videos. Guess my channel will be making a comeback. =)

I wonder where we'll put the fish tank. And we have a lawn out front, with a little white cast iron picket fence, and some bushes under the window...I think one of them is a flowering bush.

I have seeds for marigolds, too, that I want to plant. I have this dream of planting them with my mom.

It's really happening. It's actually happening. We're really moving in there. We have the keys. The rent is paid.

Wow.

Thanks, God.