Sunday March 12, 2006 @ 1:57 AM
Music: Same Situation - Joni Mitchell
This is the most raw entry I have ever written.
How fitting that it is also entry #100.

    It's been almost two years of university, and I have failed to make any real friends. I can say all I want that it doesn't bother me, but it does, on some level.
    It's not that I haven't tried. I went to Frosh week and met a zillion people. Some of them were nice. Most of them I never saw again. In my classes, I did the exact same thing I did when I went to Ward: randomly said "hi" to everyone around me, made small talk, learned some names. It's not that I haven't met people... It's not that I don't know and talk to at least one person in each of my classes, or that I haven't had lunch with people between classes occasionally. I've done all that. I just haven't met anyone who I'd consider more than a make-shift friend, I haven't met anyone who I've hung out with outside of school. Lately, I have stopped trying; there doesn't seem to be a point in making friends at UTSC now, since I won't even be there next year (college for three semesters, remember?).
    It doesn't really bother me that no one has taken overt interest in me, because I haven't taken overt interest in anyone. I cannot blame people for feeling indifferent toward me, since I generally feel indifferent toward them.
    It's not even that I'm lonely that's bothering me. I'm not really. I'm best friends with Katie, I see Andrew a lot, and I've always been close with my mom. I see Mary and Alexis quite a bit. I see my Ward friends when they come into town on occassion. I'm busy with school, and I have non-school things that I'm interested with that keep me busy. In any case, I've always been a pretty solitary person: I get anxious when I have too many social engagements (even enjoyable ones) and not enough time to myself.
    Still, it bothers me, and not unreasonably so. I have never had trouble making friends before. I'm not a shy person. Then again, I often have a hard time getting (and staying) close with people, and I'm sure that's working against me. I really don't like getting close enough to people that they can affect me emotionally -at least not before I'm sure I can rely on them.
    Maybe I'm just disheartened. After we all split up to go to different schools, I became aware -for the first time really- that friendship is fragile, and far from permanant. Maybe I think it just hurts too much to invest interest in. I'm not going to lie: when you guys left it broke my heart. Andrew can tell you, I cried for a month. But for all that, I didn't make any greater effort to keep in touch -I figured the sooner I stopped caring, the sooner I would stop hurting, and that has been true to some extent. The best part about being dead is that you don't have to feel anymore.
    When I think about it, I'm not really close friends with anyone who isn't something else in my life too: Andrew is my boyfriend, Katie is my sister, my parents are my parents, Mary and Alexis are family (well, Alexis is basically family). My friendship with these people is safe -they will (hopefully and likely) always be in my life in one way or another. Even if I lose them for a while, they will come back eventually. Other friends, they are not bound to me, and they come and go. Sometimes I think it's not worth having them, because eventually they will leave me or I will leave them, and then all we have is hurt. This is evident to me, not simply due to my friends leaving (I know, we've still kept in touch), but by the way I myself have thoughtlessly discarded good friends in the past (one in particular comes to mind, and she is reading this and knowing that I am talking about her specifically).
    In some ways, I have always been like this and felt this way. When I was little, my mother would urge me to invite my friends from school to celebrate my birthday parties, but year after year I would insist on just my sister and Mary. My mother has told me a million times that I should choose family members to be in my wedding party, because if I choose friends I will look back twenty years later and they will mean little to me, I will have long lost touch with them. When I entered high school, I lost touch with everyone from elementary school, except those who came to Ward with me. Some of my elementary friends tried to keep in touch, but I phased them out, thinking that this is just what happens when people separate -that they must move on and meet new people. Even in high school, when my friends vowed we'd keep in touch after graduation, a few times I said point-blank that I wouldn't keep in touch -that we'd just inevitably grow apart and shouldn't bother fighting it.
    I feel that I have great insight in many aspects of humanity -love, family, spirituality- but I will admit that I really know very little about friendship. I don't keep much in touch with my old friends, because I expect (and know) that they have made new friends. At the same time, I don't reach out to the new people I meet in university because I expect that they have their own friends outside of school. I know in the past how badly I have treated people who have clung to me, tried to get to know me, attempted to keep in touch. I'm afraid to try that role with someone else, because I assume that everyone is like me.
    And I know that this my problem, and that it is a problem. I know that I am horribly flawed in my assumptions and expectations. I know that my thinking is distorted, and that what I am feeling is not necessarily the reality of the situation. I know that friendship must be something much greater, even if I am not able to see it. This is not me blaming the world for my problems, or crying out for help or more attention from my friends who read this, or saying "why is this happening to me?" I am just saying it, all of it, because it is what I have been thinking about.
    I think I'm a little bit damaged, but that's not an excuse, and it's not unchangable. Next year, when I go to college, I will once again put my assumptions aside, and say "hi" to everyone, and learn names, and make small talk, and try. I have not given up, but I am currently at a low point, and I am taking a break.
    Nevertheless, I just feel... empty? I'm facing a real challenge now: I always thought friendship was a bit empty, but that was okay because friends were as easy to make as they were to lose. Now that they are not so easy to make, I am in conflict as to whether I want to remain in my current state, or take a chance in investing something greater. Now that friends are not so easy to make, any friends that I do work to make or keep... I will have to feel differently about them. I don't know if I'm ready for that yet. If I lose them, I will have to feel differently about that too. I don't know if I'm strong enough for that.
    So please, anyone, enlighten me. All of you who have asked my advice about love or family or anything else that I profess to know about... If you know anything about friendship, I ask that you share it with me, because apparently I am at a loss. What has been your experience? If you can allow yourself to love someone without the guarentee of keeping them, how do you deal with anticipating and handling your loss? How do you keep yourself from turning cold and withdrawn, as I have turned? Is it better to be dead inside and comfortably numb, or to live in pain?

~Shayla

Saturday March 4, 2006 @ 8:35 PM
Music: Baba O'Reilly - The Who
A thought has just struck me...

    And the question of the day is: What experiences early in your life do you feel may have affected your personality? I've been reading a lot of psychology over the last month, and I'm currently thinking about this question.
    As for myself, I think my childhood really significantly shaped the person I am today. Throughout my childhood, the messages/self-beliefs I learned included:

• I am a creative person. I remember in preschool, one of the activities was to make a person dressed for winter out of construction paper and paper plates, but we were only expected to make the person from the waist up. That bothered me -who wants to make half a person? I was the only kid who made my person legs and feet, and the preschool lady told me how creative I was. I remember making up stories, both in and out of school (remember, my first "book" was "written" age three - actually, my grandma did the writing part) and family members and teachers always told me how creative I was. I remember picking out the tunes of songs on our piano when I was really little, and my father saying what a good ear I had, and how creative. I used to make up games and stories and dress myself and my sister up as a million different things, and my mom would videotape us and tell me how creative I was. I remember drawing pictures at my cousin Mary's house when I Was really little, and Mary told me that my picture was good (this meant a lot, since I worshipped the ground she walked on when I was very little). I think this self-image, re-enforced so many times throughout my childhood by so many different people, definitely influenced the person I became and the strengths I developed.
• I am a smart person. This developed about the same time as the creativity thing, and in the same way I think. I was always curious and asked a million questions, and was encouraged by my parents to be this way. My parents did all they could to answer my questions or find out answers with me... I used to think that my dad knew everything. I guess it's not surprising that I ended up being attracted to Andrew, who also seems to know just about everything. Anyway, once I learned to read I found things out for myself. Also, being "Gifted" and send off to a special school once a week just re-affirmed what I had always been told and had believed -that I was smart.
• I am different from other people. I know that everyone is different in some way, but I definitely felt this way... Actually, I guess this developed a little later on, around the time I started going to Gifted. I was the only kid in my class (and one of two in the whole school) that went. I felt different from the rest of my class, and even in Gifted I didn't really fit in and start making friends until grade seven. In my regular school I rarely had more than one or two close friends when I was little (although I imagine that's pretty normal for kids). I spent two months of the year up north, away from any school friends -I learned to like exploring in the woods, being solitary or just playing with my dog and sister (although other kids did come up on weekends, and that was always fun).
      I think this feeling of being different is both good and bad for me, as a personality trait. On the upside, I feel that I am different mostly in positive ways. I guess sometimes I feel special is what I mean to say. The downside is that being special still means being different. I feel I have a difficult time making (and keeping) close friends, and that I have no interest in being close friends with the majority of people that I meet. I also often find myself expecting that they won't particularly like me, because they won't "get" me (fortunately, this doesn't tend to affect my self-esteem too much, because generally I don't "get" them either). I think this mostly developed in grade six-eight. Yeah, I was one of the geeks, but I never felt bad about it because I knew it was better than what I was "suppose" to want to be: a two-faced, bitchy, shallow, lookist popular girl.
      I think this is also why I'm with Andrew: he's very different, and under-appreciated too in my opinion. Sometimes it feels like the whole world out there is blue, and Andrew and I are orange. We don't always "get" each other entirely, but I think we can both still appreciate and respect the parts of each other that we can't understand.
• I have something important to say. I have an opinion about everything, and it matters. I chalk this one up to my parents. My mom was always big on self-expression. My father was always big on caring about the world around you. Both were big on believing that one person can make a difference, or at least has a moral responsibility to try. When I was very little, I got very upset when I learned about injustices that occured in the world -people lying, killing each other, exploiting each other, destroying the environment, being cruel to animals, etc. My father always praised my desire for justice (he said it was just like him), and both of my parents encouraged me to have an opinion about things, even if it differed from their own. And this, of course, led to my animal activist phase, my writing protest letters phase, etc. ;)
• No one is allowed to hurt me. Looking back on the total disregard for danger I had when I was young (I could have broken my neck climbing those rocks and trees... If my kids want to climb, I'm going to need to go on Valium or something...), I think I always felt really secure. I never worried about people hurting me, because I knew my father and my dog Blue would never allow it. My dad used to pretend to fight with me, my sister, my mom -he'd stomp on the floor and yell and pretend to be hurting us- and Blue would run over and push my dad away, make him stop. That dog had an amazing sense of justice -if he thought family member were fighting, he would always protect the smaller person (he would push me away from my sister, or my dad away from my mom). This belief was impressed upon me very early, and it has stayed -I stand up for myself, and I would NEVER stay in an abusive relationship... If only for fear of what my father would do to the guy. ;)

~Shayla

PS. Sorry for not updating/commenting on anyone's journal in a while... I am making a resolution to try to catch back up on that ASAP.

Tuesday February 21st, 2006 @ 10:16 AM
Andrew talks to himself in the shower...

    I got to Andrew's house earlier than expected today... He's still in the shower and no one else is home (yes, THAT is why I'm here!). He left his door unlocked, and it's FREEZING outside, so I let myself in...
    Silly boy, I can hear him talking to himself in the shower... Does this surprise anyone?? ;)

~Shayla

Tuesday February 14th, 2006 @ 4:12 PM
Music: The Boxer - Simon and Garfunkel
Happy Valentine's Day!

    No time for a long entry... I have to go study for my midterm tomorrow... How romantic! :P
    Want to cheer me up? :) Go here and tell me what you think of me (stolen from Claud and Laurie):

What the heck is "johari"??

    Now where are those chocolates that Mom bought me??

~Shayla

Sunday February 12th, 2006 @ 12:27 PM
Music: Dala - Where have all the boys gone?
It was a good one...

    Oh man, I'm too groggy to try to write any kind of pretty post, so I'm reverting back to my list-making. Highlights of my birthday:

• A midnight phone call from Anne and Son, wishing me a happy birthday from Hamilton. Awww, you guys are so sweet!!
• All the lj birthday messages!! Aww, you guys remembered! ;) I'd like to thank one person in particular for the very flattering picture of me (*cough*Anne*cough*)... Oh man, that's SCARY. ;) Oh well, at least I have a nice ass, right Claud? All you guys are awesome. :D
• Going for breakfast at "John's", the place that my parents went to eat breakfast on the day they got married and on the day I was born. It's just a hole-in-the-wall kind of diner, just a long room with a long counter with barstools (some which have broken and been replaced with chairs) and no tables. This one old asian man, John, works there by himself, and he's open every morning from six to twelve. He serves two things: bacon and eggs, and "The Hungry Man's Sandwich" (a sandwich with bacon, eggs, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes). That tells you the kind of place it is. It's on the corner of the street we used to live on, when we lived closer to downtown when I was a baby. John remembered us, as did a number of people who were eating there who had lived in the neighbourhood for over twenty years. :)
• While we were in the area, we drove around and my parents pointed out landmarks significant to their childhoods, or to when they were married and we lived in the area. It was interesting, like family history. My parents both lived and went to school in the area around our old house. My dad's street in particular is significant, just because so much of my family lived there. My dad lived at 260 (the house has since been rebuilt, since when he lived there it was just a little shack), my aunt Barbara lived next door, my aunt Fran (before she married my uncle and became my aunt) lived across the street, and my uncle Lloyd lived a few houses down until a few years ago. We saw where my Dad had his first cigarette (on the roof of a garage), the park where my parents went skating in the winter and the hill that kids sledded down in the winter (sometimes into oncoming traffic!!). Someday I want to write a book about my parents' stories. :)
• Playing charades in the middle of the big salon/hair school. We went to this hair cutting/styling school that has a big salon and you can get things done really cheap because the people are all students. I went because I wanted a hair treatment (my hair's kind of dead after the whole perming episode :P), which I got and it was great. But then my mom said I should get them to style it in some different way because it was just so cheap and I should take advantage of it, try something different, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes, you really shouldn't listen to your mother. The hair person curled my hair, but it took hours, and I was pretty cranky about it because I hate sitting in a chair having someone tug at my hair when I don't really care how it looks (well, this is what I have learned from the experience). But anyway, I think Katie could tell I was getting miserable, because she suggested we play charades. And by charades, I mean Katie acts things out, and my mom and I guess (and we're TERRIBLE guessers). The all time best part of my birthday was watching her be ridiculous and act out Snuffluphagus and Oscar the grouch in the aisle of the hair salon while people are staring at her and cracking up because she looks so silly (I love Katie, she's shameless). :)
• Going out for wings at All-Star. Damn, those were good fucking wings. :D
• I actually got really good gifts this year, even though I wasn't really expecting to get much at all. My parents bought me a new UofT sweater, which I thought was my birthday present from them. But they ended up ALSO getting me a new radio/CD player that I wanted... It's so beautiful, it looks like an old 1950's stereo, and it's silver... It looks so beautiful in my room... And Katie bought me a copy of "Flowers for Algernon" because I was talking about how I love that book but don't own a copy (if you haven't read it you should, but it will probably make you cry). Andrew bought me "Street Fighter Two Turbo" for my SNES, because I told him that Mary and I used to play it when we were kids (that game is AWESOME). My grandma sent me a birthday card with the annual ten dollars, and her wonderful birthday message (she always writes nice things, and I was afraid that I wasn't getting a card this year because I thought we grandkids get cut off at nineteen, but I think twenty is actually my last year). Aunt Elain gave my forty bucks (YES!) and Mary gave me a gift card for the stag shop and the DIRTIEST stuffed toy you will EVER see... It's a yellow monkey with genitalia (including some crazy pubes!). She spent over $70 at the stag shop (I know! My crazy kinky cuzin! :O) so she got a free gift (the monkey). So I made out pretty damn good this year... What will I buy at the stag shop?? I must think hard about this... Ahahaha... "HARD" ;)
• Playing Street Fighter with Mary and Katie... But not Andrew or Ursis (or however you spell his name) because they're too good at it. Mary and Katie and I just button-mash. :) I haven't narrowed it down to my favourite character to play yet, but give me time... Maybe I'll actually think about starting a one-player game, instead of just two-player all the time?
• It turns out that I like poker. AND that I'm not half bad at it. :) After wings, we went back to Mary's house because she was holding a poker night while her parents were out of town. Oh man, I've never played poker before, but I really like it!! Andrew and I both went in, and I went out pretty quickly, but then Andrew let me take over his chips while he went to get high with Katie and I KICKED ASS!! I ended up going out second last, and with a close hand! Oh man, I was too stoned to count my chips, but I knew how to play my hands... DUDE, I like poker! :D
• My birthday wouldn't have been complete without really good sex. I'm not going to go into detail, because I know you guys don't want to hear, but let's just say that my birthday was DEFINITELY complete. ;) Thanks, Andrew.
• The best part about my birthday? It's not really over yet. I still have a chocolate ice cream cake in the fridge to eat (if you read this and you're in the area, drop by today for cake!!), I'm going out to dinner with my family to East Side Mario's tonight, and of course reading week is coming up and then I finally get to see you Ward people! MALE STRIP CLUB!! C'mon you guys!! ;)

~Shayla

Saturday February 11, 2006 @ 9:53 AM
Music: Reeling in the Years - Steely Dan
I'm officially 20!!!

    I'm doing my birthday update now, because my family has confined me to the computer while they wrap my birthday presents in the kitchen. ;) Man, this is where I get my procrastination from!
    Oh man, I feel so old... Twenty is a big jump from nineteen! Andrew and I were at Blockbuster this week, and they're doing a ten-year anniversary re-release of The Lion King. Yeah. Ten years. This is when I realized I was old. ;)
    I can tell that this is going to be a good birthday though. It already has been. I got a midnight phonecall from Andrea and Sonali from Hamilton calling to wish me happy birthday, which made my day. -Er, night. :)
    Today's going to be good too. My family is going out for breakfast at the same restaurant my parents ate at twenty years ago today, on the day I was born. The same guy still owns it. I think that's pretty cool. :)
    Then later tonight it's All-Star wings with Mary, Alexis and Katie... Good times... And then Andrew switched his work shift so that I can still see him at like eleven-twelve o'clock, on my actual birthday... It's going to be a good day. :)

~Shayla

PS. Thanks to everyone who already wished me a happy birthday in my last comment box. :)

PPS. I'm thinking that I'm going to amuse myself, for my birthday, but making a tape of various people singing me happy birthday like Marilyn Monroe sang it to Kennedy. It'll be fun to look back at in future years. :)

Friday February 10th, 2006 @ 11:08 AM
Music: My Favourite Mistake - Sheryl Crow
All's well that ends well...

    It's amazing... For all the things I'm so afraid of, there is SO much that I'm not afraid of.
    I'm not afraid of failing, because I will still have everything I truly value: family, friends, Andrew, and the personal talents and abilities that I treasure.
    I'm not afraid of death, because I think in a way it will be better than life.
    I'm not afraid of old age, because even when Andrew is long dead from his terrible eating/not exercising habits, I'll still have Katie to grow old with. Katie and I joke about growing old. We'll live together, and she'll be a great fat old woman, and I'll be a scrawny hag of an old woman.
    And together we'll sit out on our front porch, looking like a toad and a spider, and scare the neighbourhood children.

~Shayla

Tuesday February 7th, 2006 @ 6:50 PM
Music: Dust in the Wind - Kansas
Intellect and Imagination:
My greatest strengths, my greatest weaknesses

    I've been procrastinating from updating lately. It might be because I've been writing in a private journal a lot lately. It might be because I've been busy with school. It might be because I'm not sure how much I want to talk about what's been happening with me lately.
    Well, I'm not going to go into detail about that, but I will tell you two of the discoveries I've made over the last week or so that you might find interesting:

• Thoughts are only thoughts. They are not facts. Just because you think something is going to be really awful doesn't mean that it is going to be really awful. For someone like me, who has gone her entire life putting complete trust in her own thoughts, this is difficult to realize.
• I am not my thoughts. Thoughts are part of me, but they are not who I am. For someone like me, who has gone her entire life basing her identity on her thoughts and intellect, this is difficult to accept.

~Shayla

Wednesday February 1st, 2006 @ 2:49 PM
This has been the weirdest month of my life...

    Do you ever feel that you're more afraid of living life than you are of dying?
    Don't worry, I'm not suicidal or anything. :) Sorry for not updating much lately... I'll post a big entry soon and fill you all in on what's been going on with me. I have class right now. :P
    I hate Wednesdays.

~Shayla

Friday January 20th, 2006 @ 1:38 PM
Music: Try a Little Tenderness - Otis Redding
The essence of a person never changes...

    Over the last few days, I've been thinking about how even though we change so completely over our lives and become different people from what we used to be, we always remain the same on some level.
    The first reason I was thinking about this is because I got hit with Season Affective Disorder pretty bad over the last week or so. For those of you who don't know what this is, it's a type of seasonal depression that hits certain people. It has something to do with the lack of sunlight people tend to get in the winter months, and how this affects some inner delicate balance in their brain or something. Anyway, if you've been experiencing depression/anxiety over the last month or so, and you can't really explain or shake it, you could just be affected by light levels too (the symptoms are not necessary constant either... I find I only get affected during hours of darkness). It's been horrible over the past week... I tend to get panic attacks more than depression, which is never NEVER fun... I've just been a mess. BUT, fortunately for me, this disorder is both seasonal and treatable. :) If you think you're being affected, try taking an hour walk outside in the sunlight every day, and in a few days you will likely start feeling MAJORLY better. I know I do (she said, having just come back inside after walking home in the sunlight from university :)).
    Anyway, the reason this made me think about how we always remain the same person in a way, is that one of the things I was freaking out about during my panic attacks was What if this never goes away? What if I'm always like this? And then I started thinking back to my childhood and teenage years, and I realize that I shouldn't be too afraid, because the truth is that I always have been like this. I used to get panic attacks fairly often throughout periods of my childhood. It's not unusual for me to react badly to light levels in the winter months -this has been happening to me for years, although never this badly (I chalk this up to the fact that I spent three days in a row in the house over the weekend, not exposing myself to any sunlight... BAAAAAAD idea...). The point is, I shouldn't be scared of this, because I've already dealt with it. It's just something that's part of who I am, and it probably always will be. The important thing is that I know how to manage it.
    The second thing that made me think about how we remain the same was my journalism class. The prof asked us why we decided to go into journalism, and most people talked about crap like how they liked to write, or how they worked for a small newspaper for a while and liked it, and blah blah blah. She also asked if we wanted to try to change the world through our work.
    When she asked me, I said: "I was the type of kid who used to get really into certain issues. I would harass kids on the playground about whether their shoes were made with child labour, or if they shampooed their hair with a product that was tested on animals. The most trouble I ever got into in elementary school was writing a protest letter to my teacher about the homework [Andrea remembers this! ;)]. And yes, I want to change the world, but I'd prefer to do that by writing books, rather than journalism. I don't know if I'll try to do both, or if I'll just come into class one day and say, 'I got a writing contract! SO LONG, SUCKERS!!'" I was happy when people laughed at that. It made me feel like myself, and there's no better feeling, really. Especially when you feel completely like yourself in front of a room full of people who don't know you. :)
    This sort of made me see how little I've really changed, even though I've changed so much. At age three I "wrote" my first book (well, I told it to my grandma and she wrote it down for me... It was about Inspector Gadget :P), and that's still all I really want to do.
    I was the kind of kid who got interested in a million different things (as a kid my favourites were dinosaurs, tornadoes and sharks... What's funny is that Andrew had the same "fads" as a kid. :)) and wanted to know everything about them, and I'm still that way (except that the subjects I'm interested in have changed dramatically... mostly... I still like sharks...).
    I was the kind of kid who was always interested in boys, and sex, and was a sexual being, and I'm still that way.
    I was the kind of kid who would read about some injustice in the world, and feel passionate about changing it, and I'm still very much that way.
    And this is all a comfort to me. If you ever feel like you're losing yourself, or that you can't remember who you are or who you used to be, my advice is to look to who you were as a child (and I mean child, as in before you hit puberty... Getting a period changes girls significantly, no matter what anyone says). You may find that the most important parts of yourself have changed far less than you thought.

~Shayla

PS. I'm curious in my theory about people not really changing too much. I'd love for you guys to tell me if you can see any core parts of yourself that existed in your childhood, either on your own journals or in my comment box. :)

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