diagnosis.

yesterday i got my blood test back and i have hashimoto's disease (an autoimmune thyroid thing) and also too much sugar in my blood and therefore am likely to be a diabetic unless i really really watch my sugar intake. that sucks. but i guess it makes me realize that i need to step it up and take charge of my life. apparently my condition was partially caused by stress, so now my parents are really careful with me. which is nice. but i don't think it will last long.

i believe that our health is heavily influenced by what we think, so now i'm looking for happiness. except it's hard to find. my mom told me i should go fall in love or something and then maybe i'd get better. i read about a woman who was diagnosed with breast cancer and believed she could cure herself with happiness, so she watched comedies every day and laughed a lot and did other things that made her really happy and stayed away from those that didn't. when she went to her next appointment @ the oncologist's, her cancer was nearly gone. isn't that incredible?

i want to be happy, but at the same time i know that i'm more inspired and feel more intelligent when i'm slightly depressed. which sucks. but depression somehow makes me feel deep.


but here's a happy memory (since i said i'd try to post happy memories in each entry):

this was during my summer in new york. we went to a museum and there was this random list of instructions in a box. so my r/a (who i had a crush on at the time) and i followed the instructions. the point of the activity was to basically become one with a wall. and at the end the instructions said something like, "you basically just had sex with yourself." good times.

foreign beauty.

this is me in philly on the last day of sophomore year. probably one of my happiest moments in life. i think i'll share my happiest memories on here in each entry. that would be nice.

beauty is a strange thing. though everyone has a different “type,” i think separate beauty ideals exist in different regions of the world. i know for a fact that i am considered more beautiful in russia than i am in the united states- i don’t fit the cheerleader image.
what i’ve noticed is that i can pick out russian people in a crowd because of their eyes. their eyes seem deeper and somehow colder. i have these eyes. my face doesn’t hold the friendliness of freckles, a warm gaze, or soft olive skin. i’m not “america’s type.”
as soon as i land on european soil i feel fresh and uninhibited. the language barrier may frighten me to an extent, but i feel more at peace on foreign ground somehow. i love how different another country feels before i even get the chance to speak to anyone or go anywhere. each country seems to have a different spirit, so to speak.
granted, i love living in the states; i feel safe here, i’ve mastered the language to the point of being comfortable with the idea of becoming a writer. but something is off. i truly can’t explain it. you’d have to be a foreigner to know, i guess. even though i’ve lived in the states for more than half of my life, and i feel entirely at ease here, i am somehow not fulfilled. something about this country makes me irritated.
i want to live in europe someday. i plan on studying Italian so i can do a semester abroad in rome or milan. i hope i fall in love with italy and stay there forever, but i’m afraid that my fear of the unknown will get the best of me and i will settle for living here, as if america is a “safe choice” of sorts.
i wonder what would be different about me if i had never moved to the u.s. i wonder if i would be on my way to becoming a chemist (like one of my grandfathers) or an architect (my other grandfather is one of the best architecture professors in moscow. he also has his own talk show. needless to say, my family is a wee bit disappointed in my choices.), or perhaps i would take over my dad's software-translating company rather than being an aspiring romantic novel-writing sex therapist. maybe i'd have a boyfriend. maybe i'd have a pixie cut. who knows.
thinking about that scared me, though; if i had lived somewhere else i would be a totally different person. i'd definitely be less liberal. maybe i'd mock gays. i honestly don't know. i wonder if there is a set right place for everyone where they can flourish and be who they were "meant to be" but majority of us simply haven't found that place and never will. hmm.

i think i'm going to go paint my nails "cherry nice." fuck you sally hansen, get better names for your products.

forgiveness.

listening to: "wild horses"- the rolling stones
eating: chicken noodle soup (i've cought the flu, ick.)

i wonder if the choice i make in forgiving someone or not reflects on my belief in change and in the fact that people deserve a second chance... or my masochism. i like to think it's the first of the two options, but i can't help but wonder if i'm a masochist if i give a third or fourth chance? i can't even remember how many chances i've given this person. i can't decide if it's worth it. i'm eager to jump into any sort of potentially risky emotional situation simply because i've been so empty lately and i'd rather be experiencing any sort of feelings.

how can i know if i can forgive this person? i'm trying to recall an instance when i have asked for chances repeatedly and meant it. perhaps with my mother. but relationships with parents are different, the bonds stronger. i have the nerve to fight with my mother because i know she won't leave me no matter how harshly i lash out at her. i would like to say i feel the same way about her, but i believe that it's only the fact that i currently depend on my parents that keeps me from breaking ties definitively. it's sad, really. i don't wish i loved my parents, because it wouldn't be fair, considering how they've been to me so many times. buying me clothes or paying for college can't make me love them. my mom says i'm shallow and unthankful because i'm only nice to them when they give me something. i like to think this isn't true, but even if it is, how are they any better when they counter all of my arguments with the fact that they pay for everything and therefore i should give them more respect? why is it always about money? i hate money. i even hate touching it. i hate loose change. i won't complain about it any more than that, i know money makes the world turn and there's nothing i can do about it. it just pains me sometimes how dependent we are on it.

so back to forgiveness...how do you know when to give someone another chance? what have you done in the past?

things that give me the heebie-jeebies.

1. amphibians (especially frogs and toads)
2. empty factories at night.
3. squirrels (it's the eyes! demon eyes!)
4. absolutely all scary movies
5. really advanced technology


my grandparents flew in from russia last night, and today i have a snow day, so i've been getting to spend lots of time with them. i love them so much they're adorable and hilarious and my grandma's an amazing cook.


anyways....today my mom was telling them about how the two of us have gay-dars and can easily pick gay men when we see them on the street because they're so well-groomed and fashionable and always smell nice, etc., and my grandma says "well your husband's totally gay then." and my mom says "yeah, you're right. he spends more time getting ready than i do and he wears shirts with pink polka-dots to work! he's lucky he has me, otherwise men would be trying to get some of that all over the place!"


gotta love family.


here's a picture of my friend mira and me when we took a trip to london our freshman year for spring break. i love how her hair looks in this. i think this picture really captured the windyness of the moment. we're standing at the top of a church (i should know the name of it).

we don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time...

that song is stuck in my head at the moment, this post isn't about anything of the sort, really.

i wish my life was more dramatic, like the movies. i'd rather be really hurt than just bored. is that fucked up? i know there are people who have shitty lives and that i don't reaaally want to be in their place, but i just really want something to freaking happen. EF.

bremenskie muzikanti.

i don't write on here as much as i would like to. this is mostly because i spend the majority of my free time sleeping and watching scrubs.

so, i ended up pretty much acing all of my exams, though i hardly studied, and finished the semester with straight A's and a C+ in AP stat (which i couldn't care less about, considering i'm a second semester senior and a C is totally fine). i feel great. i didn't realize how depressed i had been before. i was depressed before getting into college because everything i did seriously mattered and was done for the sole purpose of getting into college. i assumed if i got into college everything would magically change, and the day that i got in i was ecstatic and everything was perfect. but the next day i realized nothing had really changed, and got depressed again because the one thing i faithfully believed would change everything hadn't changed anything.

one random fact about me that i don't think i've told anyone before: when i come across a word i don't know in a book i read it backwards just to check if it maybe means something reversed. isn't that weird?

alrighty, so, while my friends were watching the little mermaid and aladdin, i was watching bremenskie muzikanti (musicians of bremensk). this animated film was (and still is) my absolute favorite children's movie. the story is pretty much about this bohemian troupe of musicians (one guy, a donkey, a rooster, a cat, and a dog), the lead singer of which (the guy) falls in love with a princess. and even though the princess really likes him, too, the king is totally against it and so the musicians try to pull off all of these tricks to try and kidnap the princess aainst the king's will. this video is one of the songs the band sings, which is about how just hanging around and singing and roaming the world with your friends is the best thing there is, and how they don't need fancy castles, and all they want is to bring happiness and laughter to everyone. it's fantastic, seriously. this song makes me incredibly happy every time i hear it. though this version isn't translated, i feel like you can still see how great it is.





& here's another song fromt he film. it's one of the times the band comes up with a plan to get the princess...they basically dress up as criminals and tie the king to a tree, and leave him there, and then the main guy fromt he abnd changes back into his normal clothes and saves the king. this was meant to get the king to finally like the guy because he'd think he was a hero or whatnot. if you read this thing, WATCH THIS VIDEO.






toodles!

baking, books, and resistentialsm.

last night i finished the great pretender, and realized that despite the great writing style, the book was entirely pointless. granted, i loved it, but it definitely had nothing of true substance. the honesty was what got me. that's something i really love in literature. not just honesty, but honesty that is almost painful. i hope i write a really honest book some day.

so, now that exams are over, i've done two things i can't do when i'm stressed: buying books and baking. i made a blackberry lemon upside-down cake today, and am ordering the following books right now:

tropic of cancer & sexus by henry miller
a coney island of the mind by lawrence ferlinghetti
lady chatterley's lover by d.h. lawrence
naked lunch by william s. burroughs

i'm pretty excited to finally be able to have time to read and bake, now that i'm officially a second-semester senior.


today's weird/funny words:

1. halch- to hug or embrace ("i'm gonna halch you!" sounds like a threat)
2. drazel- slut (who knew?)
3. snollygoster- a dishonest politician (aren't they all?)
4. kilkenny cats- people who fight relentlessly to the bitter end
5. resistentialism- the theory that inanimate objects demonstrate hostile behavior towards people (what the hell? who came up with this? though i must admit, at times i've thought my alarm clock was out to get me.)
6. torschlusspanik- sense of panic brought on by the feeling that life is passing one by (the german equivalent of a mid-life crisis)

today i watched p.s. i love you and it somehow made me relax about finding the right person. i hate when i complain about things like not being able to find someone. i know i'm only seventeen and i have my whole life ahead of me...but it's hard to help wanting something that seems so wonderful. i also hate that i hate myself for thinking i'm too young to be thinking those things, because i don't think you can be too young to fall in love.
the weird thing right now is that i don't really have feelings for people anymore. i used to love my friends and i'd love random boys and i felt great about both, and then when those friendships or boys were gone, i'd be sad but i would get over it. i felt more alive then than i do now. i want to feel somethign but i feel like the more aware i become of my surroundings and the people i know, the less alive i feel. that's strange, isn't it?

why am i so...blank?