Missing depth.

I watched "What Dreams May Come" again tonight.

The last time I did, it was with Mark because he had never seen it before. The time before that, I wrote a whole blog about my thoughts after having watched the movie.

In case you didn't know, it is my most favorite movie of all time.

I remembered that I wrote the afore mentioned blog and after watching the movie, I scanned through past posts looking for what I said. I ended up reading some of my other posts. I enjoy doing that immensely.

My time spent back home in Malaysia was dark and tumultuous. So very many things went wrong then. I was away from the people I loved, especially Mark, I had virtually no friends, I had to work for my Dad against my will, and as if that wasn't bad enough, 2 nights before I was supposed to return to Hawaii, I got "grounded" from College. Never do that to your children unless you want them out of your house and into an asylum. It was my fault for not choosing to enjoy being home. It was hard to go back to living at home after being used to having the freedom of college life. My parents took it into their hands to re-parent me, so to speak. I learned to love it there. Just the hard way.

After being held back from school, I broke up with Mark. I had to deal with my feelings towards my sister. She had left for school without me. I was constantly jealous and bitter. I was always struggling with feelings of being a failure and being kept from growing. Then my parents nearly went through a divorce.

Yeah. I've had a little taste of what hell can be.

Of course, I survived. I don't know how, but I remember I still found ways to be happy. I kept going. Blogging rescued me. It was on here that I put things into perspective and learned to understand myself. I made friends through reading and commenting on other people's blogs and they would support me through everything. I still have friends like that.

As much as I would not wish to go back to that place in time, I miss growth that I had experience then, the person I was, the strength I had gained. But most importantly the blogs that I would write. I was reading one today and I marvelled at how well I understood my emotions and my ability to word them in such a way that those emotions return to me as I read them today.

I suppose when you don't really have anyone to talk to, you could spend alot of time thinking out posts in your head and ruminating on them before putting it down on paper (in a manner of speaking).

All those trials I was facing were, as I see it, legitimate. When I cried and fought and struggled, it wasn't just me wanting to dramatize. Though there was plenty of that, I was dealing with real issues pertaining to life. Serious matters.

I wasn't just some ditzy girl complaining about how much she missed her boyfriend. Though I did do plenty of that.

Not that I wish for trials, but as I was crying to the movie today, I felt so stupid for not having anything of grave importance to cry over. I miss having Mark here. That's about it. Everything else is going swell. Things that are not are so minute. What do I have to cry over and write about? Me not having a dance partner for swing or latino club? Oh, boo hoo. Those are such BIG issues. Right. *rolls eyes* My family is too far away for me to disagree with them. Their problems aren't mine. Whatever issues I face are solely my own and so insignificant in the long run.

I guess when I was home, I was thrown right into life and out of the security of school. School is safe and sheltered. While someday, I will get to a point where I will have to make life-altering decisions like whether or not to marry a certain someone, or where to live, or what to do after college, right now, I don't really have to worry about much. I just keep doing what I do everyday for the next 2.5 years or so.

It's like learning to drive in a large empty field. Things can go wrong, but there are less obstacles, less challenges, less life-threatening situations.

I just figured something out: part of the safety of college is the depth of the relationships I form with others. The closer you are to the people around you, the more drama and problems you will have. That sounds really bad. To redeem myself, I also have to add that you will have more joy too.

Being in college is a selfish thing. For me right now, anyway. Alot of what I do revolves around me and me only. What I want. What I feel like doing. For some reason, I have shut out alot of people from my life. My family is virtually non-existant in my world. I forget to think about them. When I do, I have such a tender moment and am filled with love an gratitude, but most of the time they might as well be on another planet. Is that right? Probably not. I need to fix that. My sister is here, but I'm not close to her. I see her more often now than we did during the Spring: every other day. We still don't see each other enough to get into arguments or anything like that. I am not on intimate terms with anyone here on campus. Not anymore anyway. Why? I think I am afraid of them disrupting my life. Poking into my bubble and creating ripples in my world.

I've never thought of myself being someone who likes to hide from people and the world, yet I've been doing that alot lately. Not because I don't like the people I know, but I just realized of how afraid I am of intimacy. It's so strange for me to say that. The girl who posts about her thoughts and feelings openly over the internet is afraid of intimacy?

It's not that I'm afraid to tell people how I feel, it's that I'm afraid that they will tell me how they feel. In my selfishness, I have succesfully avoided forming intimate bonds with a many people because I didn't want to have to deal with their problems, or to be dragged into their life. What a terrible attitude to have.

When I was home, I tried to shut myself away from my family. I spent most of my time trying to communicate with people here. I didn't want to get knee deep into reality. I wanted to live there as an observer. That was the problem. It wasn't until I learned to let go of most of my past and live in the present that I learned to love it.

Bear with me. I am making a discovery of myself as I type. This isn't a pre-meditated post. I don't have time to do those anymore.

Why I feel the breakup is the only source of emotional depth in my life? I think that is because he is the only person that I've let into my world right now. Every body else is literally at arms length. By choice. Stupid, stupid me.

And now that Mark and I are slowly trying to separate our bubbles from each other, I find myself lost. I am losing big a part of myself and I have yet to figure out what to replace it with. I don't want to hop from one serious relationship to another.

But what, then, do I do to maintain that depth?

I need to be giving more to the world instead of simply taking from them. I did that when I was home, expecting my family to give me what I wanted without serving them like they were serving each other. I segregated myself from them and found myself not belonging and feeling very unhappy.

I feel like an idiot now, after having come to this realization. True joy comes from giving. I remember learning that from experience. Well, I guess I didn't really LEARN it then.

Ironically, the post I originally intended for talking about my lack of depth lately (again) turned out to be pretty thought provoking. I thought so anyway.

I need to change so many things in my life. The more I learn about who I really am, the more I am ashamed to be me. Under it all, I know there is this beautiful person who constantly wants to do the right thing.

I just need to do it now.