July 04, 2023
I've been thinking a lot about um what social media means to me? Just the recent events of like Discord, Twitter, Reddit, etc idk the idea of like this age of internet that I really grew up in is shifting in a new way that I don't quite understand?? I don't know it's a little scary.
I don't really have any philosophy or heavy thoughts on the matter, but I don't know. Maybe, I'm just more reserved now. But when friends talk about joining new social media sites, I'm just thinking do I want to put myself out there? Am I really capable of it? I'm just really tired, maybe.
You know it's so ridiculous, I'm like at a point where I have no idea how to meet people online or meet people outside. But like, I like my social circle as it is right now. I just, I don't know.
I don't know where I'm goinng with this or anything. I think I'm just in a weird sadboi funk at the moment. So here's a highlight for the day: I learned my great grandparents lived in Amroaha (with a mango farm), and my mom was born in a (train) station town called Buhusawal and that some relatives grow papayas, and I was born in a city famous for their oranges. We are such a fruit family.I love that for us.
Anyways, have a good night.
June 19, 2023
I didn't mean to update so soon, but my mom figured out my grandma's fish curry recipie and i feel so soft about it?? i'll take a picture of it later, and maybe jot it down for everyone. I just I think it's a beautiful thing how people live on in recipes and I don't know. I feel like she's back in a wonderful way.
I don't know somethjing about just people living on through a recipe is making me wobble. I don't think I'll ever forget the taste of tamarind after today.
I was a really picky eater when I was kid. Texture or smell could drive me away, but today. Today, I think it's worth braving fish if it means I can imagine my grandma, you know? I didn't really know her well, she lived across the ocean in a different country for most of my life. Sometimes family overseas feels like a collection of imaginary beings, not quite real. She died in 2021. She was pretty sickly, and my mom and I figured out a way to set up a webcam to talk and for my mom to check on her. I don't know when I had the curry, I just thought about my mom watching that stream on her phone, and of my sharp, witty grandma sleeping.
June 14, 2023
Hi again. i'm not really quite sure what to do right now, i want to yell, but i can't help but feel so guilty and weird when i just roll around in a homie's dms. my friend once told me, "you aren't monopolozing anything, we're having a conversation" but is it a convo if i just. don't shut up????? i'm too quiet, too loud, just something never quite dialed in right.but i don't think anyone believes they are dialed in right. all our frequencies are a little out of whack.
i'm just thinking a lot more about people recently. i don't know is that what happens once you hit past 25?? you just start thinking about people like crazy,and you think about falling in love, you think about strangers, and friends, and family and what your future will look like? that's.that's like really scary. i like my future where i am at right now thanks, but i am. grateful. for all the bits and pieces of the person i am becoming.a friend and i were talking about how important it is to cultivate ourselves. and that's what i'm doing.but i don't know!! family and faith and culture and all these things that hold me in tandem, i've been. working on breaking free. my friend said something to me, that i keep having on loop.
"i love disappointing my parents, it's important to me. i must make the suffer. i love dissapointing th emotherland but also not giving up on traditionn. containing multitudes as form of protest."
thanks for the food for thought homie. i was telling um, my brother about it (found family 4 the win!!) and besides his advice to me being "you need to kiss the wlw of new york" it was also just learning to make the ultimate choice for you. i don't know if i'm there yet.
i just feel insane and i put my entire life on pause for people, for an expectation and standards.and i'm just. really working on unwinding that. i just still feel so unready for people and things and prickly and awful, but i know i am not. i'm cultivating a lot for myself rn, and working on establishing new hobbies! i'm still taking pics so i can make a page about it. i wanna work on it for a month before i offiically report it and make a page about it.
everything about this entry feels contradictory, but that's okay. i think life is about that contradiction and the constant push and pull of a person. sorry this isn't like coherent at all, it's just.my fucking brain. we are out here. we are sooooo out here, baby. goodnight gotta be up by six am.
June 04, 2023
So here's the scene. You're sitting with earmuffs on in a vrc dj world, you're listening to russian punk rock and you are fucking vibing. you're a little guy on egg and toast. That's me right now, working away on my neocities site. I wanted to tell you all about the art museum I got a chance to see. I wonder if I should make a seperate page for pictures or if this will do for now.<> I'm still a bit overwhelmed by my homepage so I am ignoring it for literally everything else rn lmao. But anyways!! My museum trip!! I was so stoked for all of this.
I got to see Yayoi Kasuma's An Aftermath of Eternity and it was really cool! I don't really have anything profound to say, but I just really adored the quiet atmosphere.
I miss the mountains.
side note: Making this site has been interesting because even in a personal online space, sometimes I wonder how much of me I want to give away and show? And the older I get, somehow it becomes even more scary? I don't know how to exisit as a whole being online, and everything is so compartmentalized I guess. I don't know, I'm still trying to figure it all out. Much to think about.
May 28, 2023
when i was a kid, i thought transformation happened over night. i'd wake up and be pretty overnight, i'd wake up and be skinny. i'd wake up and be a better daughter. i'd wake up and be a better person, someone kinder and charasmatic and likable.
but that's not the case at all. transformation is done in increments, and it takes a sort of active resolve. and in the end of the day, i can't escape the fact that i'm still me.
but i am more at peace with who this *me* is every day. i hope you are too, diary.
i dyed my hair silver, well a part of it recently. it makes me feel like a bird, a corvid, a swan, a duck. it makes me feel something. something delicate and in between. change is happening in a lot of invisible ways, i've been working out weight lifting at the gym, but i haven't quite lost weight from it, but i've gained strength to carry multiple bags of potting soil and mulch all on my own. it's amazing how strong someone can become in three months. i used to feel like caterpillar in its goop forming, and sometimes i stilld definitely do, but now i am closing my eyes and letting myself be present for the days i feel the transformation process.
i feel a bit heavy in my heart, even though i shouldn't have any reason to be. diary, i hope you're doing okay. i went on a pretty shitty date last weekend, he fell asleep with the oven on three times, totaled his car, and did that thing where he flirts by trying to get a rise out of me. i don't think i am meant for the hot singles in my area, or anyone really.
i feel lonely sometimes diary, lonely in the way where i wish to experience the mundane with people again. with someone again. and i feel frustrated, sometimes i feel like i have to choose between who i want to be and who my family wants me to be. i've been asserting myself more and more, silver bird hair and muscle gains.
your kid is yearning and doesn't really know how to feel about it.
i am also like annoyed and frustrated. i dont know how to articulate it well, but just know i am annoyed. maybe if i can figure out how to articulate it later i will. Update: its the morning!! im articulating!! i think its not a bad thing to treat people in your life gently!!! you can still be direct and still be kind!!!! ITS POSSIBLE!! its hard in practice, but getting frustrated over someone being sensitive is so. idk.
i've been listening to the acoustin v of enter shikari and it's like nice.
May 5, 2023
We're watching teen wolf today!! working our way through season 3!! there is something so ridiculously campy and wonderful about watching teen wolf for the first time in 2023. i think it's a ridiculous good time,and it's nice to watch something light hearted but still does earnest work at horror.
there's a lot to reflect on this week even though it's only tuesday. it's only tuesday lads. but today i got a chance to talk with my gym trainer about family and love. we talked a lot about growing up as only children, and feeling like a black sheep within our family. my trainer is a 65 y/o man, but even though we have various differences and life experiences. and he was telling me not to think about a future without them, and just focus on the family and love around me. instead of premptively like distancing myself.
i don't know if anyone can relate, but i feel like i try really hard to be a cold and cool person so i don't feel hurt - but i'm really bad at it. i was in my trainer's office, talking about how i was going to die alone and he was like "veera! you got too much personality to ever die alone." and boy, do i hope so. and this is a diary, so it's a ramble. butt sometimes i feel so cold, and distance but things like this remind me. that i have a lot of love in my heart to give people around me..
this is a pretty heavy post to start this diary with, but i just. i want to remember that people love me. my friends love me, my trainer cares about me, my parents care for me and i'm very blessed for that. and ijust want to remind myself that family and love is something i can choose to nurture every day. i want to nurture a lot!!
April 12, 2023
feelings i want to hold onto forever:
resting my head in my moms lap, her hands on my forehead, through my hair
sitting in the back of the car while my friends drive us back to the hotel. they are chatting in the front. its so warm.
buried in blankets on my friends couch between them
holding my parents hands, holding my dads sleeves
resting my head on a loved ones shoulder.
May 5, 2022
>everything everywhere all at once is every conversation i want to have with my mom spanned across a million multiverses.
its me and my mom looking at one another and seeing our biggest fear. its my mom telling me on my graduation day that im not the daughter she wanted, and then hugging me on my graduation night while im sobbing on the floor. and i cant tell her why im crying. its cut fruit as an apology, and making daal the way i like it and adding less salt bc im an anomaly with a low salt tolerance. it’s me five years old saying BIG HUG and holding her as tight as i can, and me twenty six not even sure how to hug that tight anymore. its my mom at every age ive known her pulling me into her embrace.
everything everywhere all at once is my moms 3000 worries and my dads slow pace and no one having a second for love. its me not knowing my native tongue, its the fact that my mom could have been something, someone great if she didn’t come to this country on my fathers whim and leave everything she holds so dear.
its me wondering do the what ifs keep my mom up at night too? does she resent? is she bitter? she gave up an engineering degree to work retail and teach public school bc this country wouldn’t let her teach college level with her credentials. her daughter failed classes, went to community college, couldnt find a job and went back to school. her daughter isnt traditional, isnt religious, isnt culturally on point. on every metric that my mother knows: i know i am a failure. (wait till she realizes i am not straight lmao)
everything, everywhere , all at once is a reminder that im not the daughter my mother wanted. but its also a reminder that my mother loves me. its cut fruit, and duaas and prayers and its patience and its the lacktherof and its me begging, pleading for space. the push and pull of parent and child. its a mother and her emotional support daughter, but im not good at emotion nor am i good at support, and neither of us are good at communicating. but my mom will still save the biggest slice of cake for me, sometimes she’ll only take a bite and give me the rest.
everything, everywhere all at once is me seventeen refusing to get out of bed, there is no point but death. giving up before i even got a chance to start. its me taking comfort in the fact the universe is so big that i dont even matter the slightest.
everything, everywhere all at once is my mother insomniatic thinking about my future. its my father in my car telling me that my mom doesnt sleep some nights worrying about me. its the pressure that i cannot handle. its the generational trauma. its my mom awake jumping from universe to universe until she falls asleep thinking about one where she can hold me close.
everything, everywhere, all at once is me giving my mom jumping points at every chance. telling her more than i should. it’s reaching out and pulling away and hoping that we get there someday.
anyways, hey mom. i love you. everyday, everywhere, all at once.