just in case

I've moved my blog!
I'm still writing and I'm still reading what you guys post. If at any point you decide to switch over as well, please follow me so I can follow you back and just read from there.
http://seoulfood25.tumblr.com/

I'm moving my blog!

Hi small group of followers,
I've decided to set up shop on tumblr. This is where I'll be posting from now on. About a week ago, my email account was hacked and even though it's not the one I use for blogger, I became really paranoid and decided to just transfer any important stuff (i.e. my blog) to something fresh and new.
When I started this blog, I wanted it to be about food and how much I loved the different restaurants in Chicago but it very quickly became more about my adoption, my inability to choose a major in college, my rocky relationship with Ian, my horrible relationship with my mother, work, etc.
On Tumblr, I will still be doing that but I also just want to talk more about being fat. I feel like society puts this huge pressure on plus size women to lose weight and to hate yourself until you're as thin as a stick. Frankly, I will never be super thin and I really need to get a hold of myself and accept that. I don't enjoy food a lot of the time anymore and am just indifferent about eating in general because I'm unhappy about how I look and how people make me feel I should look.
Also -
I still don't have a job.
I got the stomach flu from Ian.
My birthday is tomorrow and I still feel...odd. Like something is still off.
I have pretty much no money.
Oh...WE'RE MOVING and we're really excited about it.
Please, please, please KEEP READING. I will still be keeping this account open so I can continue reading your blogs (yes, I do read your blogs. I just don't comment.)

Why I Hate My Birthday

I'm turning 25 on Saturday.
Over the years, my birthday has become more and more disappointing. This means that one of the following things happens:
-I have to do what everyone else wants to do - forget what I had planned or what I wanted to have planned. I have to do what someone else or a group of other people want to do instead because I don't want to be rude and exclaim "heyyyyyyy IT'S MY BIRTHDAY! LET'S DO THIS INSTEAD!"
-I have to be considerate of EVERYBODY ELSE on my birthday - Over the past few years, I have had to share a birthday with my friend Miguel. This year, I told myself "nope. no exceptions." Because last year I made sure I arranged my get together on a day that worked out specifically for Miguel. So on Saturday I will probably have to spend my birthday without Miguel because I chose to think of myself first this time. I'm not too broken up about this and I'm sure he isn't either.
-People don't follow directions when it comes to gift giving - In the past, I have given people very descriptive instructions on gift giving and my point still doesn't get made. I like presents. They're nice and all. But this year, on my birthday, I am unemployed! So I need gift cards and money for our move and for me to be able to buy groceries the next day! And you know...having many birthdays in my life, a lot of people don't listen. I don't NEED a new sweater...and I don't NEED a new towel. I NEED to have money or gift cards ready to buy ant traps (like last year) or cleaning supplies (like last year) or a mop or a tea kettle or cat litter. People don't listen. My mom is especially guilty of not following this rule...she always wastes money and buys me things that I don't want or need.
-There's usually always one person who breaks something/acts ridiculous - When I turned 21, my friends convinced me to have a party at my house in the basement. All of these random ass people came with a particular friend of mine and I let it slide because I was really glad he was there, but then things started getting broken...like a vase that my mother had had for years and years that I think my grandmother or even my great grandmother originally owned. Or a bottle of liquor that once belonged to my dad that he had behind the bar for a really long time..as in ever since we moved into that house over 15 years ago.
-I always end up crying or feeling bad for something that I didn't do on purpose - There have been a few occasions when I have said things (that were not even inappropriate) and then people get on my back about it. Okay...so...you can make racist jokes all day and night, but I can't make one comment about how you drank too much? Alright.
And finally...
-I never get the birthday cake that I want - I actually can't even remember the last time I got the cake that I wanted. Seriously. So this year, I'm turning 25 and my cake is being made by my mother...yet again. Nope. Let's forget about the fact that I asked both my mother and Ian several times to get me a cake from Jewel or some other grocery store. Just a regular old white sheet cake with my baby picture on it. I'm turning 25, let's do something different and funny by having my cake represent me as a small child or an infant. No. Nope. Can't happen. It is now the week of my birthday and my mom's baking a chocolate cake. The fact that something so small, LIKE A BIRTHDAY CAKE, can go wrong every. single. year. is extremely frustrating. I'm fairly certain that my mother has made my birthday cake almost every single year and to be honest, I don't like it. I just do it to make her happy.

I should also note that the closer I get to my birthday, horrible things start happening to me. I.E. - this year, I lost my job! Last year, I was getting yelled at every single week for the smallest, ridiculous things.

I feel like I just keep getting bigger and bigger signs that I do not belong here. Every year, I feel less and less significant to people or at least, less significant to the most important people/person in my life.
What a fucking joke..

I really have not been as frustrated as I currently am about not having a job. Every time I think I have a lead on something, I end up completely crushed. "Oh you don't speak spanish? Then you're not qualified."
Seriously? Really? Give me a fucking break.
It's so frustrating. I've sent my resume out to so many people and I still have nothing. I hate not working and I hate that this has become so stressful for me.

exes

As much as I would love to be an adult and say that I have found it in my heart to forgive all of my ex boyfriends for the things they did, I can't.
And the truth (for me at least) is that, you can't be friends with your exes. It's weird.
Recently, one of my ex boyfriends added me on facebook and I let the friend invitation sit there for a day or so while I mulled over it. I thought to myself "having him as my friend is not going to improve my quality of life. we will probably never see each other even though he lives in rockford. also, there were a lot of things he did in our relationship that i don't think i'll ever understand"
Against my better judgement, I added him back. A few weeks went by when we would just comment on eachother's statuses and such. Eventually, the not knowing feeling came back to me and it was starting to eat away at me. I decided to send him a message one night, and I think it was after Ian and I had gotten into a small disagreement, and I asked my ex boyfriend what it was that I did wrong in our relationship and why he felt the need to do what he did.
To clarify, I was 18, 19 at the time when we met. It was long distance because he was living in Rockford with his mom and he wanted to go to school in Chicago at some point so that's why I thought it'd work out. In the mean time, he would visit me every other month and stay for a week or so. As a teenager, I was very guarded. This means, I had absolutely no interest in having sex or dating a number of guys. My mother had somehow convinced me that she stayed a virgin until she married my dad (yeah I fell for that) and I believed her. I believed in these values. Even after I found out my mom was a big liar lol, I still held onto the values of knowing that you love someone before you commit to something big like sleeping with them.
This caused problems in my relationship and caused similar problems in past relationships. Because I was inexperienced, I had absolutely no interest in having sex and thought it was irresponsible of me to be doing something like that at that age.
So with this guy from Rockford, he'd continuously try hooking up with other girls but would fail miserably because thank God, none of them fell for that whole "don't worry. my gf is totally okay with it." and because I'm 5'11" and I'm Asian, the girls would mostly respond with "yeah...no. I don't want her kicking my ass." There were a few occasions when girls would actually fall for his stories and I would end up contacting them or them me and it would usually end with "I thought he loved me. He said he was gonna leave you. He lied to me. blah blah blah"
Eventually, this all became too much for me. If you know anything about the person I am, then you know that I hate giving up on people. That's pretty obvious since I am still with Ian after all of this time and all of the arguments we've had. But with that relationship, I knew I was just looking like an idiot and couldn't deal with it anymore. I wrote him a break up letter, he had to go back to Rockford, I hugged him goodbye and that was the last time I saw him.
It's funny to me because I see that he has still not changed his ways AT ALL. He pretends that he's this really nice guy, who doesn't do anything wrong, and he flirts with all of these different girls while HE'S LIVING WITH HIS CURRENT GIRLFRIEND and she has no idea that this is going on.
Anyways, when I wrote to him asking what I did wrong he finally admitted that it was him who screwed up, that he was in a bad place (and he was) and that he was just childish looking for attention wherever he could find it.
Unfortunately, hearing that didn't really bring any closer for me. And because of what he did, I'm still terribly paranoid that Ian will one day leave me for someone else. While those doubts aren't as amplified as they used to be, they will always be there because of what the guys before him did. And even though I feel like, with time, I'm healing from my past relationships, I have to wonder if I'll ever fully recover and allow myself to truly be happy with Ian.

I still don't have a job. I counted and without adding the X amount of jobs I applied for through career builder, I have applied for almost 40 jobs in the past week. And still, NOTHING. How? HOW? So I decided that I'm going to start writing more cover letters. I REALLY hate cover letters because they're so time consuming but I feel that if I take my time to write one, it'll really make a difference to an employer especially if they don't ask for one.
I shouldn't be awake but I just kept tossing and turning. I feel completely useless because I still don't have a job. SO...since I signed up for volunteering with that literacy program, I'm going to start actually volunteering (JUAN, LET'S GO!). The program is really cool and it's kind of a way for me to get that teaching thing out of my system - I was going to be a teacher until I found out how little they get paid and then I was like "well...I need to..live and stuff...so...yeah.......no." And it might sound really bad but I don't know how else to say this: I don't care enough to pursue this degree and then settle for a small salary and the possibility of losing my job every single year. My cousin is a teacher and she loves it. She's always loved kids. She's a great teacher and is wonderful with children. She's been teaching at the same school for more than five years now? and every year, they "fire" her during the summer/when school ends and then "re-hire" her. This happens to a lot of teachers she works with and she has been fortunate enough to get her job back every fall. I couldn't handle that kind of stress and I know it happens all over the place because our economy is shit.
So before I lost my job, I convinced Juan to come and sign up for this volunteer program with this place in Chicago called Open Books. Basically, you can read to kids, be a "buddy" where you are assigned to a child and you gotta get them excited about reading because they tested low or are not doing so great in their reading classes, you can help kids with their writing and you can also work with teenagers and help them work on their resumes. The program also has field trips where the kids come to the building and you get to work with the group and do poetry games and other fun stuff like that.
My main motivation for becoming a teacher was because of how important I felt and still feel literacy is. As a kid, I loved reading and writing...this is mostly because I always scored very high on my reading and writing state tests and I always did well in those subjects in school. It just came naturally to me. But I had a lot of friends who did not like reading, who wrote horribly and didn't care because my teachers didn't care. So I guess I can still make a difference by working with these kids through Open Books and all I can do is try to get them excited about reading and writing. Even if I were to just help a dozen or so kids, that's a dozen or so kids that demand that their parents have more books around the house and that's a dozen or so kids that score higher in reading and writing when they take standardized state tests. And maybe, MAYBEEEEEEEEEEEEEE those kids could tell their friends "hey I read this book. READ IT." like I do with my friends...all of the time...Seriously. I convinced Juan to read Valley of the Dolls, okay? Come on.
I'm definitely going to start devoting my time to this program because it's not paying work but it's something that could keep me busy in the mean time I guess.

I feel like there is a lot about my relationship with Ian that I'll never understand. And in the past few months, I've kind of reached my limit of what I don't understand about him and us.
I don't really know what is going to happen with moving since Ian still finds it so difficult to be as open with me as he is with his mother. It is beyond frustrating and this is one of the things that really makes me want to leave. He does not communicate with me properly and the more I read up about relationships, the more I see how communication or lack thereof is infamous for ruining relationships. I always tell him that he needs to talk to me more, that he needs to be more assertive not just in general but with me too. I'm bossy but if someone knows better than me, I don't mind being bossed around.
I feel that he thinks I'm this person that I'm really not, that I'm unapproachable, that I'm closed off from the world when it's really him who is closed off from everybody.
I think that I've done everything I can but I get nowhere because Ian never meets me half way. It's just another one of those days where I'm sitting at my desk, on the other side of the wall, quietly crying because I'm at a loss for words. I have said time and time again what needs to change, what he can do to change, what we have to do to help each other but he makes no effort. All he does is stress out about everything that's going on, the finances, his work, the move/not moving, the rent. And instead of voicing that to me, instead of sitting me down and saying "this is what you should spend on groceries" "this is half of the utilities" and "this is what you can spend on whatever you need" instead of saying "I'm really stressed out and I just need you to talk to me and calm me down"
I get silence. And I'm sitting here, I'M LITERALLY SITTING HERE GOING "what's wrong what's wrong what's wrong what's wrong what's wrong" OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN. And at the end of it all, I just feel like smashing my head against the fucking wall because I'm doing everything I can just to get him to talk to me when I know that he just openly goes crying to his mother/complaining about what's happening.
I'm beyond frustrated by this entire situation. I don't know what the fuck we're doing here. I don't know if we're moving or WHAT. I keep having to be the hopeful and positive one saying "we're gonna be okay" "we're gonna be fine" "we'll make it" "it's gonna be tight but we'll get through the move" and he's just like "uh huh" "yeah" "we'll see" "okay"
This is one of those days where I wish I could just get in a fucking time machine and go back and stop myself from getting involved with Ian because I did not sign up for this shit. I did not sign up for him giving me the cold shoulder 80% of the time, being in a bad mood, being sad, being lethargic, being moody, AND NOT TELLING ME ANYTHING THAT'S GOING THROUGH HIS HEAD. It's okay to feel those things but when you make the fucking conscious effort NOT to talk to me about that shit, when we've been together for TWO AND A HALF YEARS THIS VERY DAY, then that's when I have to sit here and ask myself "WHY..................WHY AM I STILL FUCKING HERE WASTING MY TIME WITH THIS PERSON WHO DOESN'T TALK TO ME ABOUT ANYTHING AND MAKES ME FEEL LIKE AND MAKES ME OUT TO BE SUCH A FUCKING SHIT HEAD...WHY..."
going to my mother's house for the day so I can not sit here and continue crying at my desk. I'm just so sick to death of being the only person invested in this fucking relationship.
Grow up. Seriously.

How I lost my job

On Tuesday, about an hour into our work day, our boss came in and talked to Juan and I as our other boss stood by the door not really saying anything.
We got laid off. The company is based on London and the London people told my bosses that the company basically didn't want to spend money on data builders - me and Juan. While my bosses say they did everything they could think of, it's hard for me to imagine this especially since my boss so quickly gave us the shit news and then went back into his office and was making jokes on the phone with potential clients.
Understandably, both of us were completely crushed. Juan has a bit of drama going on with his house and he sadly had to put his dog to sleep later that day so Tuesday was really not the day for him.
Obviously, it wasn't the day for me either. My birthday is next month and we are planning on moving so it couldn't have happened at a worse time. Since Tuesday, I've applied for 12-15 jobs and haven't heard anything from anyone.
To put it plainly, neither of us saw this coming. We packed up our stuff and I was so upset that I left without saying a word to either of my bosses. And while my one boss gave us his fiance's number, who is in charge of an assisted living home and is willing to interview us, that brings me absolutely no comfort. Also, it's just weird.
Since I've been home, Ian has made daily cracks at me not having a job because that's just the type of supportive boyfriend he is.
I feel completely useless and depressed and I apply for pretty much any job I feel I have a chance at. My resume is pretty clean cut and I personalize every single email I send out.
It sucks. I guess today I don't feel as useless because I cleaned up my desk, I swept the living room and dining room and put all of my knitting materials into one area instead of throwing yarn all over my work area.
Ian still wants to move and I support that decision so long as he is understanding of my financial troubles.
I will apply for unemployment next week or the week after. I've been on unemployment before and it's just so sad. I find no comfort in the fact that a few of my friends and family members are also out of work. I'm just sad.

I always feel like it's this never ending struggle to get Ian to talk to me like a normal person. I see him do it with his mom and I even see him do it with other people. I don't know what's happened to our relationship but over time it's like he's been afraid to be more open with me, afraid that if he disagrees with me or tells me "no we can't afford to do that" or "this is what I want to do but we'll see if there's time for what you want to do" that I will flip out or something. But I never have a problem with being open with him and telling him "I think we should do this" or "I like this"

I love being with him but there isn't anything that I can do about this and I've been struggling with it for a long time. I want to stay in this relationship but at the same time, it's hard to call it a relationship when he doesn't talk to me and doesn't feel it necessary to be open with me. I don't understand it and it makes me feel like a monster.

I'm fairly certain that when this lease is up, I am going to be moving back into my mom's house or into a studio apartment. The latter is unlikely because I've never owned a credit card. I could always stay with my mom, build up the credit and then move out into something of my own.
A lot of the time, I feel like I am living with a stranger. I get lied to or I don't get to know about certain things. Why - I will never know. And honestly, at this juncture, I don't care anymore.
I never lied to you and I never kept anything from you, yet you continue to do so. Imagine how difficult it's been to live with someone like that and to be with someone like that for this amount of time. Anyone would go crazy.

Without the internet

It's scary to think about what our world would be like without the freedom of internet. I feel that a lot of people will be out of work while others will be effected because of the online leisure they've created for themselves.
I use YouTube a lot, I take to my twitter, facebook and blogger accounts to complain about life, check on my friends, read about people's lives. I feel that too few people really know what is at stake here.
As a U.S. citizen and as a college journalist, I know how important freedom of speech is.
Taking away our rights to the internet are just as bad as taking away our freedom of speech.
Whoever wrote up this bill is an idiot...

Emotionally, I am a very lonely person. I'm in this place where I don't even want to bother saying anything anymore. I have said so much, said the same things time and time again and I've gotten absolutely nowhere.
...Why am I still here...

50 Books in 365 Days

I've started the 50/365 project. I don't believe in making new year's resolutions because they never seem to work out but if I did believe in them, I guess mine would be that I'd like to read more.
So the way to work on this is by starting the 50 books in 365 days project. I'm starting with a book Juan bought me for Christmas - The Pinkerton Diaries by Rivers Cuomo (Weezer's lead singer).
It's an easy book to read, mostly because it's a collection of essays, songs and journal entries he wrote from 1994-97. The problem I'm having is that I grow very tired of the way he writes, very quickly. So I'll read a few pages an then I just get to a point where I don't want to read what he's written anymore.
He is either complaining about something or talking about a book or subject for school in which I have no idea what he's discussing.
So because of this, I started reading one of the other books on my list which was James Franco's Palo Alto. Yes, it's the actor who was in Spiderman and is infamous for being a pot head.
I have found that this book is very easy for me to read - mostly because James Franco is not a good writer. What I meant to say is that you can tell that he didn't feel the need to grab a thesaurus to impress anyone. They're all short fictional stories told by him. I like it.
There are a lot of classics on my list, most of which I'm going to pick up today. Somehow I have to ease into the classics because it'll take time for me to get used to the different types of writing and the vocabulary..which brings me to my next point.
The whole reason why I decided to do this was because I have a lot of friends who constantly make me feel stupid - not on purpose, of course. They all have very wide vocabularies and these same individuals happen to read...A LOT. I will be keeping a dictionary with me in case there are any words I don't understand....so I'm really hoping that this will improve my reading and writing skills and the ability to use big words without feeling stupid.

Do you ever feel like the longer you stay in a bad situation, the worse it gets?
I'm at that point. I've run out of reasons for why I should stay in this relationship. I can't sleep because all I do is dream about Ian cheating on me. There's no reason for it but the dreams are as real as can be and I wake up startled and in tears.
I loved Ian but I've kind of reached a fork in the road where I feel like it's not enough to love someone, especially when you have so many problems that the other person doesn't think needs fixing.
I keep thinking about all of the mistakes he's made. I did the same thing whenever things went south in my other relationships as well. I think about all of the bad stuff and then I can't remember why I still put up with it. All I can think about is how disappointed I was when certain events took place. I try to figure out what I did to these men to deserve being cheated on or to deserve to be the butt of someone's joke. Or the countless times that Ian has chosen to misrepresent me and our relationship. There was good stuff here. But Ian made it so imperative to tell people how bad our relationship was, that I've now lost whatever good memories we had. And anything that I can remember can't measure up with the loss I've experienced in this relationship.
I never and still don't understand how you can say you love someone but then go and do bad things to them. How you can be so stupid to think that you're not really doing any harm, so long as your partner doesn't know about it.
Throughout the past few years, every decision I've made has involved Ian in one way or another. I've always included him in my life and I've always tried to do the best for both of us. For Ian, he has spent the majority of his life doing nothing but for himself while I spent the majority of my life caring for other people, making sure everyone had what they needed, focusing on certain individuals and doing whatever I could to help them. Ian just thinks about Ian...what Ian has to write...what Ian has to do...what Ian has to eat...what bill Ian needs to pay. There is no us in Ian's head. There's him and then there's me.
While in my mind, "how are WE going to do this that day" or "when should WE go here" "what are WE going to do about this situation"
When you're in a relationship, you're supposed to trust the person more and more over time, trust that they'll be there for you, trust that they'll run right to you when you're about to fall. With Ian, I don't think I ever had that trust. I think that instead, with time, he became less trusting with me for some reason. He continues to build this wall up between the two of us that has become impossible for me to break down.
I'm mentally exhausted. I have tried doing this for two and a half years and I'm really just...done. I gave somebody everything that I had and I got absolutely nothing in return. I've wasted the past two years with someone who doesn't care about whether I'm here or not, who has never fully appreciated me and probably never will. I don't understand how there can be so many people in my life who have loved me and still love me...and the one person that I want that from just can't give it to me. I'm just so tired. I'm tired of trying to figure out where I went wrong and what I did. I have to keep reminding myself that I tried my best but I feel like a complete failure. I feel stupid for putting up with this for so long. I feel helpless because this is not a situation in which I can really do anything to make things better.
I can't sit here waiting for the person that I fell in love with because I know he doesn't exist.