I forgot about blog 6. Yeah it was due three, four weeks ago? So I guess here I am, at 1:56 am, allowing my inner insomniac to take over my every action and thought, the darkness is truly an enigma and I feel almost like Eric Wang with much less profanity. Recently my days have consisted of an 11-4 schedule, whether I stay up all night or I stay up most of the night, it doesn’t seem healthy either way. Usually, I’d read this essay countless times to calm my inner anxieties down, but today I feel that I will run through this one time and one time only; it will, no doubt, be long. So, to save your beautiful eyes from strain, Mrs. Trowbridge, it might be best to invest in a pair of thin framed blue light glasses, or simply calling it quits here and placing your fingers on the “@” key and the “%” key. In this blog I hope to write down my current standings and my thoughts about the future, cliche, of course, but much needed. 

Today, Pritzker extended the quarantine period past April 30th and predicted a possibility of it going all the way to May 30th, so I might have to join the gang and celebrate my entrance into adulthood in the nook of my own abode. To say that I am struggling to cope with this current pandemic is by far an overstatement. My go-to words of describing myself consists of “night-owl”, “black coffee”, “introvert”. To everyone who is missing their friends right now, I went through that phase the first few weeks too. I’d get excited about the possibility of quarantine ending and finally being like Rapunzel stepping out of her one hundred foot tower, yet the moment fades as quickly as it comes. Yes, my Rapunzel moment is now a much closer reality, yet I like her tower moments with Pascal a little bit more. I’ve developed my own personal nirvana fueled by absolute mindless apathy, one that is fueled by materialism and feeding my eyes with the blue light emitting from the screen in front of me as I type endlessly. To say I am one of the many people who are affected by quarantine is, alike, an overstatement. I, like the minority who chooses to put milk before their cereal (it just feels more right), like staying at home. I had a different revelation in quarantine, one that made me realize that I have forced my persona for the last four years to be likable, sociable, respected and trusted. In junior year I talked to one of my friends who was really into psychology about my Myers Briggs results, and she shockingly replied “I really thought you were an extrovert”, to which, for a moment, I thought I was as well. I’m not, not one bit. 

In quarantine I’ve tried to develop new habits, my mom wants me to learn speed reading for college because she doesn’t think I can handle the pressure. To be fair, I don’t think I can either. Instead, I started off trying to develop a new schedule. For the first two weeks of quarantine before spring break, I would wake up at 11 everyday because of me working so hard the night before, and continue to proceed forward with that fervor. Like humor, I used it as a coping mechanism to forget about the fond memories that I could have made while I sat around mindlessly writing down Wronskians, titration equations and Hamlet papers, yet as I came face to face with my harsh reality, my inner reality, the introvert I tried so hard to suppress these years, told me it’s fine. That is, after the countless existential crises I had during that time. I told myself to let loose a little. I became a movie fanatic. In order, I watched Kill Bill 1 and 2, Marriage Story, Taxi Driver, Inglourious Basterds, Pulp fiction as well as binged all of Netflix’s Sex Education and all the Brooklyn 99 episodes on Hulu. I’ve grown a new appreciation for cinematography as well as one for the impromptu bangs I cut for myself two days into quarantine. I’ve also tried to learn more Chinese through watching Running Man (and falling for Lucas Wong a bit too hard) without the subtitles so 我觉得我现在进步的还是挺多的. I’ve made countless lookbooks of what I want to be in college without thinking of the fact that I might not make it out of high school and invested in a pair of thin wired, blue light blocking, non prescribed glasses, for my surprising 2020 vision that is slowly deteriorating. It seems like all of these events happened both simultaneously yet extremely far apart. 

Next year, I will be attending a college. It reps maroon, has students who pride themselves in their unhealthy coffee consumption, struggling Pre-meds and econ majors; it has one of the most beautiful libraries in the world only 50 miles away, off the coast of the lake in the glimmering city that I’ve lived next to my entire life yet failed to truly enjoy. My mom says I’ll be stressed, and I can’t say that I won’t, but alas, I brought this onto myself what’s there to do. [Here lies what was supposed to be my cliche tangent on how I want myself to do better and the bright future that I would like to have that I could not bring myself to write]. After this ramble, here’s all I, truly, have to say for myself: 

 

今天你在网上看到了一个会弹钢琴的盲人。他说 “你虽然看不到世界，但可以让世界看到你” 可是你性格内向不想把自己献给世界。如果你永远不想要世界看到你的话，如果你想永远呆在你自己的世界里，哪也可以。虽然世界看不到你，你起码能想收了世界的美丽。我知道你现在实际上很害怕，你怕满足不到世界里的人，你怕丢脸，你怕你坚持不住因为你要走的路太艰难了，你太弱了。可是明年如果你坚持住了，那就够了。我会很满足，我会很骄傲。别装了，哭吧。

 

I did. 

It’s 3:32 am; I think I will sleep soon.