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midnightblu3
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Name: Herrick
Location: California, United States
Gender: Male
Interests: You! Badminton, Bowling, Lightshows & Raving, and living healthy :]
Expertise: Healthcare, Pharmacy & Alternative Medicine
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
AIM:  fourleafcl0verrr
Member Since:
3/1/2006
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| I've always known that I was pessimistic, but I never really paid attention to how pessimistic I could be and how limiting it was. The sad thing is, though, even though I know how much of a negative effect it has on me, I probably still won't change.
I realized that the biggest reason why I'm not able to fall asleep at night is because I like to think depressing thoughts. Stuff like mistakes I've made, regrets I have, and such. But I also like to let my imagination run wild and think of what would happen in situations such as getting into an accident. I like to reassure myself that someone I care about would visit me in the hospital. I feel as though since my life is so empty, I subconsciously try to spice it up by thinking of ridiculous situations such as these. Ridiculous "what ifs". And now that I write about it, it makes me feel even more conscious about how stupid it is.
One major theme that's present in nearly all my posts is this feeling that I'm unable to establish a connection to people. I've felt that I cannot develop a strong friendship with people despite my efforts. The thing is, though, my pessimistic nature halts any possibility of this happening. I realized that at any sign of doubt that they don't value me as a friend or that they don't like who I am, my mind becomes clouded, my pride takes over, and I stop trying. I never knew how stubborn I was about the idea of a good friend, and that I could not accept anything less. I yearn for something perfect. It's obvious that it's something I'll never have, but I continue to deny it. Even acknowledging this, I know that I still won't accept anybody less than perfect for me.
It's very rare for me to hang out with people that are better friends with each other than they are with me. Last week though, I was in that very situation, and I saw how real friends interacted with each other. It was the kind of friendship that I felt was ideal - even though we only planned to play badminton and eat some pizza afterward, they wanted to keep going and go to one of their houses to play Kinect Dance Party and play some music. And during pizza, they were making a whole bunch of plans for next week.. to go rock climbing, eat korean bbq.. I was shocked. I was so used to simply saying goodbye after whatever we had planned was over. This is what having a good friend should be like. Seeing this only made me realize how weak my own friendships were. I also realized another thing that was holding me back from having a friendship like this.. I'm too serious. When they were mentioning Dance Party, I was already trying to think of some excuse to go home. The thought of playing a game like that just wasn't appealing to me.. and I wondered why I couldn't just let go and have fun with them. It's no wonder that people don't enjoy my company enough to want to spend extra time with me. What people are looking for is someone fun. I just hate how I'm too tightly strung up to be someone like that.
I give myself so much time to think. Let me change.
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| Albert Einstein had once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. By this definition, I am as crazy as they come.
I saw college as a fresh start. I knew no one, no one knew me. I was older, living on my own. I wanted an unforgettable college experience like in those movies. I was full of energy, optimistic, and open again. I didn't want to be the same reserved, quiet person.
When I was assigned into a dormitory and met my suitemates, I was determined to make a good impression. They all seemed like cool guys, and I didn't want to feel left out, like I had felt so much before. But anyone who has experienced living with strangers before will probably understand when I say that you start to find out a lot of things you don't like about them. My roommate turned out to be emotionally unstable and violent. It escalated to the point where police were involved when he snapped during finals week and pulled out a switchblade on us. An extremely scary moment. He was allowed to continue to take classes but could no longer enter the dormitories. I was glad he was gone. Though I never told anyone, he had bullied me a lot.
One of my other suitemates was your typical, slow-talking, football-loving jock. I tried to be agreeable with him, but he always had a problem with me. Whenever our suite got together and played something like Monopoly or Super Smash Bros Melee, he would always go after me and call me a pussy. Sometimes when my mom would visit me and bring homecooked food for me to eat, he would say it looked and smelled disgusting. Feh.
Anyway. There was one day when all the extracurricular clubs set up booths and students could sign up for them, and I pretty much signed up for anything I had even a little interest in. Archery, CSA, Pre-Pharmacy, Dance Coalition, etc. Like in junior high and high school, I just wanted a solid group of friends to hang out with. The thing was, I never went to a single meeting because I was a bit afraid of going alone. I tried convincing my suitemates to come with me, but they never wanted to. Looking back, I should've just gathered the courage to go by myself. My fault.
Luckily though, I made a few friends from the discussion sections I had as part of classes. Of course, this wasn't without complication. In my group of friends was another emotionally unstable individual, a girl who became suicidal when her boyfriend broke up with her. This wasn't that kind of suicidal where it's all talk. She attempted to stab herself in her heart. Another extremely scary moment. We took her to the hospital and looked after her when she got discharged. If you're wondering, she's fine and healthy now.
I had to go to the hospital again after midterms, when another one of my suitemates nearly died from alcohol poisoning. I remember it vividly. His breathing was shallow and his body was a pale green. Being exposed to all of this.. I never imagined that so many terrible things would happen.
In my sophomore year, I decided to move out of the dorms with one of my friends. Most of my former suitemates stayed in the dorms, with the exception of course being my roommate who was banned from the dormitories. I'm very glad that I did. As if by some fate, the person who was assigned to be my roommate if I stayed in the dorms turned out to be another extremely unstable person, who did shrooms, weed, and constantly sexiled his roommate. Not to mention, he was a complete asshole who treated people like crap and always turned the suite's heater on high just so he could walk around in his boxers while the rest of the suitemates were uncomfortably warm. So glad I was able to avoid living with him. Every time I would go over to their dorm to hang out with my old suitemates, he would always glare at me as if I were unwelcome. I remember the very first day I met him.. I was talking to a friend in the suite's living room and we were laughing about something, when he came out of his room and said, in a serious tone, to stop talking shit about him and laughing about it. We told him we weren't talking about him, but he gave us an exasperated look and said, "Fine, if you want to be that way." Since that day, we were treated with utter contempt whenever we visited our friends there.
The most turbulent time of my sophomore year, though, was completely unrelated to him. During the summer in between sophomore and freshman year, I became highly involved with a multi-level marketing company. Persuaded by their promises of early retirement and working as a "family", I invested huge amounts of time in pursuing high hurdles in achieving self-sufficiency. Drawn in by their friendliness, optimism, and energy, I felt like I finally had a place for myself to belong. They accepted me, treated me with respect, appeared interested in my life. I was addicted to the feeling. I drove home, two hours from and two hours back, every weekend to attend meetings. I tried to sell products to my high school friends and acquaintances, so that I could impress my coworkers with my progress. My high school friends began avoiding me because of this. I had become an MLM salesman.
After several months without much progress, I began to feel doubt. Whenever I was back in school, I would always think about these things, and my doubt grew. I felt like everyone I met there was fake. They smiled, but I could see in their eyes that they didn't care about me. It was a crushing realization, to find out that this place I had felt so happy and felt so accepted in was a lie. I cut off ties with everyone and quit. As if to reaffirm my doubts, they didn't seem fazed by my leave. I was just an expendable associate, after all. I fell into an extremely deep depression and stopped going to my lectures and my labs. I failed every single class that year.
t.b.c.
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| Some people are born with a very secure sense of identity. They know who they are, what they like, where they want to go in life. For a long time, I thought I was one of those people, but until recently I never really realized how lost I was. No, I'm not trying to be dramatic lol.
I switched though social groups a lot throughout my school life. A lot of people would probably say that they are people pleasers, and I'm no different. I think the reason why I was never really able to keep a person in my life was because I tried to appeal to too many people at once, or that I kept trying to change to fit my current social group better.
In elementary school, I was your typical gradeschool geek. I went to two private schools in addition to public school, so I was always ahead of my classes and I was always the person that classmates went to for help. One memory that I've always kept was one in third grade, when the class encouraged me to compete in a math challenge against the teacher. The class wrote some problems on the board along with the answers, and I sat with my teacher facing away from the board while the class called out random questions to test us with. It was just multiplication, but I was able to tie with her in both the speed and accuracy of my answers. Hahah, I was pretty proud of myself, actually.. Back then, I actually thought of myself as pretty popular. I helped a lot of people with homework and stuff, and they were pretty nice to me. Of course, it wasn't all good. I was beaten up twice in elementary school. At the time, I really didn't understand why.
In the summer before junior high started, I started having breakouts. I became a bit more reserved, and found myself a place within a group of troublemakers. We would mess with people, be loud and obnoxious, even get into fights sometimes. I started getting used to hearing and using slang talk during this time, because I was always ridiculed when I didn't know what they were talking about. Even though I tried hard to fit in, I knew in the back of my head that I didn't belong there. I always got uncomfortable when they did something like throw a carton of milk into a crowd of geeks or start talking crap to another group of troublemakers. I got plenty of after-school detentions and my grades dropped.
Though I had strongly opposed it at the time, my mom went to the school district office and transferred me from the high school that all my friends were going to, to a different high school nearby that had a better reputation for good grades. Left without a social group, I had to once again fit in with whoever would accept me. I found a place with a group of skater guys who played hacky sack every day at lunch. They were the "hip" guys, I guess.. but again, I didn't really fit in. I was the butt of their jokes too often. It wasn't a very fun year.
In my sophomore year, I changed again. I tried to be "cool". I wore oversized t-shirts and basketball jerseys, baggy jeans and the like. The real "gangster" guys never accepted me, but I acted like they had anyway. A pathetic year.
In junior year, my acne was at its worst. This was when I was really made fun of and ridiculed. I didn't expect people would actually call me "pizza face" directly to me. Walking down the halls, people would push me, block my way, or throw crumpled papers at me. Some people underestimate how bad bullying is in high school, they don't know the half of it. I had to avoid parts of the hallways where the popular kids hung out because they would always pick on me. I went home for the 40 minute lunch break, every day. This is the year I started becoming a very quiet person.
In senior year, my strength of character was tested. Left with dark scars and even keloids from all of the breakouts I had the previous year, it was so bad that some classmates actually avoided talking to me. I can vividly remember one day when our first "back to school" assembly ended and everyone was crowding up to leave the gymnasium. I heard someone near me say to a person next to him, "What happened to Herrick's face?" ugh. Despite everything, I tried to be preppy that year. It was my last year of high school after all.. I started getting in to the whole "vintage fit" look with plaid shirts and slim jeans. I participated in clubs more and met some people that I still talk to today.. but overall, this year changed me. I always find it funny when people say they're insecure. They don't know what true insecurity is. Fed up with always catching people staring at my scars, I developed a habit of looking at the floor when talking to people, or facing away from them. I was too ashamed of how I looked.
t.b.c.
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| Hello! I realize that I haven't updated in a long time. Things have been going pretty well lately, for the most part. I've been dieting and exercising consistently for the last 10 weeks. I'm pretty happy with my results; I've lost about 9-10 pounds of fat and gained about 2 pounds of muscle. Motivation to keep going (:
I finally got a job. It's completely unrelated to my degree, but I'm happy for it nonetheless. My first day is on Monday, a full 8 hour shift with a 3 hour class right after x.x I hope I can keep up with my exercise and diet when I have these lengthy workdays..
Life has been lonely, as always. I'm sort of used to it by now, but I do have those weak days once in a while. Today, I looked through all my old xanga posts and comments I received over the 6 or so years I've had this page.. It made me a bit depressed, being reminded of those days where I was still naive, and those days before everyone started drifting away. It's sad seeing conversations with people who I used to talk to on a daily basis.
Looking back at some of my posts, I realized that I actually wrote pretty well when I was really depressed.. I actually got a lot of comments back then, haha. Even from random Xangans that I didn't know. It was nice getting some attention for a while, haha! It's also interesting to know how I've changed since then. I have made some little steps, though I still have a long way to go. But what's missing is still the same. I wish I could have someone I could really talk to.
I was hoping I'd be able to go somewhere on Halloween, but I have class that day from 6:30pm - 9:40 pm. Actually, I have to present a speech that day. My professor said she'd give us extra credit if we showed up in costumes. I'm debating on whether I should dress up in my V for Vendetta costume... It's an all-out costume with mask, wig, hat, boots, cape, belt, everything.. so I think I'd feel a bit sheepish, especially if everyone else just wears simple stuff. Delivering a speech in full costume would sure be interesting.. But hey, who cares what other people think, right? :P
Well, that's about all I can think of for now. thanks for reading!
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| Have you ever met someone that, no matter how hard you try, you just can't seem to "connect" with that person?
Lately, I've been hanging out with best friend along with another friend and her bf. Now, her boyfriend is a good guy - he's tolerant, talkative, friendly, and active. And even though he tries talking to me and I try to be agreeable and get to know him, there's just something that feels wrong. I'm strongly reminded of this clip from Family Guy that outlines how Quagmire feels about Brian : http://www.noob.us/humor/seems-like-quagmire-is-talking-about-you/
I don't know what it is, but I feel like whenever I respond to him, he's quietly judging me or something, and that he secretly hates me. xD Even though my friend insists that he likes hanging out with us, I always feel that my personality clashes with his - he's outgoing and sociable while I'm quiet and reserved. It's just that my best friend absolutely loves hanging out with them so he keeps arranging hangouts with them, so I'm hoping that whatever it is that's wrong is solved.. haha. But I just can't help but feel that my type of personality is the type that he hates most.
Has anything like this happened to you?
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