Tag Archives: blast from the past

The 30/20/15/10/5 years ago meme

30 years ago:
I was 9/10 years old in 1984. It was a good year for music. Culture Club, Duran Duran, Dead or Alive, and Van Halen were some of my favorite bands. I couldn’t quite get the hang of Michael Jackson’s moonwalk.

20 years ago:
I was 19/20 in 1994. I was in a crappy minimum wage job that paid $4.50 per hour. I had to take a break from college after my sophomore year to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life. I returned to school in 1996.

15 years ago:
I was 24/25 in 1999. I was still in school working on my bachelor’s degree. I found some work doing web development. I haven’t moved out of my parents’ house yet. I think the American music scene has started to go downhill.

10 years ago:
Year was 2004. Several months ago, I graduated from college and got my BA after six years of juggling a full time job and part time school. My coworkers threw me a surprise party for it. I started to take up aikido. I also joined a local chapter for the No Kidding group.

5 years ago:
Year was 2009. I was still dealing with the fallout of an illness that sneaked up on me in 2007. I was on the track to graduate school when cancer came along and completely derailed my plans. Fuck you cancer.

2 years ago:
Nearly ten years after my getting my BA, I finally made it back to the classroom. ohai mental torture.

1 year ago:
I went on medical leave from work and school for 3 months to get gutted like a fish. Much to everyone’s disappointment, doctors declared me cancer free. I now have scars to show for it. I hear chicks dig scars.

Yesterday:
I was at the Coffee and Tea Festival with my sisters.

Today:
Just another day at the cube farm.

Tomorrow:
Cube farm and then school.

girl alone at the bar

It was a cold November winter day in 2006. I was meeting up with a friend for a movie in the city. She had called to notify me that she was running an hour late. So I decided to kill some time by nursing a beer in a nearby bar. I noticed a girl with the chemically fried red hair sitting alone at the bar. I chatted with her for a bit. She proceeded to unload her life story. I don’t frequent bars very often, so this would be the only closest to craziest drinking story I got.
———

Drunk woman at the bar: …every day I wake up and remember I went to sleep feeling heartbroken. Wash, rinse, repeat. To go on like that for 4 years, I believe that must’ve took a year off my life. That’s how long I’ve gone without love and happiness. Ever since my ex-boyfriend left me, my only motivation now is to keep on living until I find my one true love.

I try keep myself busy with new hobbies and stuff to get my mind off the fact I’m a pathetic unloved loser. Hiking, dancing, yoga. They can only do so much.

All this sadness and pain of loneliness has taken its toll on my health. I seem to be getting flus every other week. It’s gotten to the point that I can’t get out of bed in the morning. I just want somebody to come and make it stop. I prayed every day for a good man to come into my life. One day an older man, probably older than my grandfather, came along and offers his love. Perhaps he might be The One to take this misery away. I normally do not accept dates from men older than me by 30+ years. You know what? I’ve actually considered it. That’s how hard up I was. But I had to turn him down because it wouldn’t be fair to him. Even though I was desperate, I really couldn’t force myself to fall in love with someone I have no feelings for.

I tried my damnedest not to wallow in misery. I tried my damnedest not to let failed relationships defeat me. You know, it’s getting harder and harder each passing day. I’m afraid I might morph into a scary marriage-hungry monster. Wanting a husband has been chronically occupying my thoughts almost every day.

When you’re hurting for that one true love real bad, you’d start overlooking the red flags. Red flags, such as him telling you a long story of how he exacted revenge on his last ex-girlfriend on the first date, hardly has any friends, and living with his mother at 40 years old. Red flags, such as him making one excuse after another as to why he’s never available to hang out with me on his days off. OH YES! AND he still doesn’t want to show me his home, even after six months of dating!

Yet I put up with his jerkish behavior for a long time in hopes that this relationship will end in marriage. I actually deluded myself into thinking that he would turn over a new leaf and treat me better. It’s all because I wanted to have bragging rights of having a husband. I want to get bragging rights of being somebody’s wife. I wanted it so bad, you don’t even know it!

I grew up believing that good girls get married off and if you’re not married off, it means you’re a bad girl, yes? My mother always said there’s something wrong with you if you’re not married by 21. I’m beginning to think she’s right.

Bitterblacktea: How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?

Drunk woman: 29. I’ll be 30 in January. *sigh* If I were a decent sort of girl, a man would validate my existence and sanction my worth as a human being by marrying me.

I’m so emotionally down and out that I’ve lost sight of reality. I’ve turned to psychics so they can assure me that I won’t grow old alone. I’ve actually pressed them to tell me whether or not I’ll get married so I don’t have to waste time chasing after a phantom husband.

I feel so lonely, desperate, and hopeless at times. It’s gotten so bad that I think simple handshakes and hugs from the opposite sex means they might be romantically interested in me.

Like this one time I freaked a guy out by staring dreamily into his eyes. All he did was he held my hand in a funny way in a handshake and I mistakenly thought that he was attracted to me. Now he sees me as that creepy chick and avoids me like a plague.

Bitterblacktea: So this is what it feels like to go mad.

Drunk woman: It ain’t fun, my friend. It ain’t fun.

[originally published on LiveJournal]

old entry from November 17, 2000

Friday, November 17, 2000
A rat humped my heel today.

My coworker, her eldest daughter and I were walking to the train station after work when I heard screams that shot straight into my eardrum. The two scampered back a few feet and continue to holler. I looked to my left and saw the cause of the commotion.

A big assed well-fed rat.

It turned its head and glared directly at the two crazy women screaming to high heaven. I doubled over in hysterics. Then I felt something hit my right heel.

Bump. Bump. Bump.

I turned around and saw another rat trying to join the first rat at the back of some restaurant. Second rat wasn’t succeeding because it kept running into my boot like a dense cartoon character running into a wall repeatedly trying to get to the other side.

The second one was just as big, bad and ugly as its friend. The daughter claimed she saw a third one. They hollered some more. Their hollering got me jumping too. I couldn’t tell if they were screaming at the rat staring at them or the one by my foot.

This is why one should not wear sandals or open-toed shoes in NYC. You may never know what might be snapping at your toes.  >.<

I told Evil Emperor Dude later about the rats. He asked me if I tried to stomp on one just like I did to the mouse in my office last summer.

D00d, I wouldn’t attempt to stomp on something that is bigger than my foot.

[originally published on Geocities]

old entry from November 01, 2001 – 11:27 AM

How could I wake up tired and drained when I went to bed early at 10PM? I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been waking up tired after dreaming about running around or running away from some menacing figure chasing me.

I was in a lab with this butt ugly man in a brown suit. Stringy and skanky thinning hair, huge beaky nose, prominent chin. Tall and bulky with round hunched shoulders. Butt ugly. Something went wrong in the lab which caused this guy to grow some green tentacles all over his body. (Think Urotsukidoji.) He dropped a few green feces from two of his tentacles in a flower pot. He then turned his head in my direction with a wicked gleam in his eye. I quickly bolted out of the lab and ran down the corridors of the school. The tentacles shot out from the door after me. I ducked as the vile appendages flew over my head and slid into the stairway. I tumbled and rolled down the stairs, got up and continued running on the third floor. The hideous monster reappeared at the end of the hallway and is gaining on my tail fast. I spotted my friend, Ali, on the floor and grabbed his collar before he could say hello. We ran up and down, over and around the campus with this tentacled hellhound pursuing us. We finally shook off the misshapened fiend a couple of flights down. My poor friend was getting tired from all that running. We looked for a place to rest and found a small balcony on the top floor. I gently dragged and nudged my exhausted friend up the stairs, eventually reaching the balcony after what seemed like an eon. The dusky sky looked rather serene from the balcony. We sat down and drifted off to sleep in the cool quiet night air.

Then I woke up. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten the whole bag of Veggie Booty before bed.

old entry from November 27, 2000

Cemetery Gates (a dream sequence)

I find myself walking in the snow on the desolate street with no name. Previous travelers before me have left their footprints in the snow. I carefully pace along the unsullied spots just to see my boot sink softly into the snow with each step. I continue walking on my path and I am not exactly sure of where I am going.

To the left of me, there is a black iron fence with spade-shaped tips on top. Behind that fence, I see small tombstones carefully lined up in rows. There are large tombstones scattered about the place, some shaped like angels, others like crosses. People are standing at a couple of tombstones. Some are weeping. Some are placing fresh flowers before the graves. All of the mourners are wearing long black coats. One lady has on a long dark reddish-black skirt and lace-up Victorian style boots.

I continue to walk on the snow-covered concrete, along the fence that cages the cemetery. One solemn-looking man in a long wool coat and top hat stands before his beloved’s grave. Every tree, grave, and blade of dead grass is covered in powdery white snow.

I wrap my cloak closer to my body yet I feel no cold and continue to walk on.

forgotten dream coming back to haunt

I finally finished unpacking my last box from moving into my apartment and found a piece of paper with a long forgotten dream hastily scribbled on it. I can’t believe I didn’t put a date on it, nor did I write down any more details on the Asian woman, the two victims, the cars, and the surroundings. I don’t remember how I made my escape from the black hole horror. Judging by the text on the meditation lecture flyer the dream was scribbled on, I’m guessing the date was sometime in spring of 2005.

undated dream
Dark outline of a shadowy figure was sucking my non-earthly body (soul? spirit?) into her humanoid-shaped black hole. She was an Asian woman who revealed her true nature as a black hole that sucks people in. I reacted by concentrating on my center*, putting all my power into it, and stood strong on my ground while holding on the back of a car for leverage. She successfully sucked two other people in. She tried again to suck me into her black hole. And again I ‘centered’ myself and held on for dear life on another car. I could feel the magnetic pull. It was scary. But I successfully avoided getting swallowed up by the evil black hole.

I was in an elevator going down. I was afraid for some reason that the elevator was going to malfunction and the car will plummet down the shaft. I crouched down on the floor, preparing for impact in the event the cable snapped. It didn’t. I seem to have an extreme fear of elevators.

* It’s an aikido thing.

Sometimes it freaks me out to see how my forgotten dreams from long ago manifest themselves in my waking reality years later.

P.S.: Just because someone with a bad mullet offers you free Kool Aid, it doesn’t mean you should drink it.

[originally published on LiveJournal]

global food crisis

I had a dream many years ago (a time before white hairs crept in like ninjas) where I’m in the future and found myself in the middle of a global food shortage crisis. The crisis was so bad that people resorted to cannibalism. I walked into a white well-lit room with a large metal table inside. On the table was a dismembered human male torso cut open butterfly style. I think the liver and kidneys sitting by the torso were human. Haggis anyone? Human leg shanks were neatly hung on meat hooks suspended from a ceiling rack. I ran out of the room and scrambled to look for an exit from this terrifying meat processing plant. A cloud of white mist noticed me running and immediately gave chase. The mist closing in on me was the last thing I remember before waking up.

I couldn’t forget a dream like that.

Why am I not surprised when something like this shit would happen?