#30 - I Don't Want to Want to Die

I know wanting to kill myself is serious, and I know I should probably be talking to a therapist about this instead of writing a blog post about it, but considering my current circumstances and past experiences, I'm not sure how well trying to get help would go right now.

This has been a problem for a while now, so I'll start from the beginning.

Up until last night, I thought the problem started when I was around 8, but then I realized it went back further than that - further than I'd ever thought. As a baby, I slept about the same amount I do now (2-4 hours, if I'm lucky; it got better in the middle). When I was 3, I had nightmares about bodily mutilation. When I was 6, I would often get sad over how "no one believe[d] me" and I'd sometimes go days without eating because I wasn't hungry. I was also obsessed with band-aids, to the point that when told I'd only get a band-aid if I was bleeding, well...

However, it did start to get worse when I was around 8. My mom was preoccupied with my little brother, who'd started having behavioral problems because of the stress of moving to a new country, and when my dad wasn't on a business trip, he was locked in the study, having a conference call. I started getting bullied at school because of my brother's problems and the fact that I was a different nationality than my classmates.

Eventually, it got to the point where I wanted to kill myself, and I'd even planned how to do it. I'd jump off the school's roof.

It never happened though, because despite my desire to die, I was afraid to venture into the unknown.

It only got worse from there. My dad started having problems at work and started hitting me, though to this day, he will deny it. After seeing the sheer amount of cruelty in the world and the fact that it wasn't just me, I lost what little faith I had in the possible existence of a god.

Of course, with my loss of belief came the questions, "If there's no god or afterlife, what am I living for? Why do I exist? Why should I continue existing?" (Also known as an existential crisis)

This only added to my already suicidal mindset.

I remember crying a lot that year.

The next year, I started wearing wristbands because I was imitating the characters from all the sports anime I'd just gotten into. My teachers didn't know I was depressed, they just knew I was quiet and didn't have (m)any friends. I got sent to the counselor because they thought I was cutting, but I didn't know the reason at the time. I told her all my problems and made her promise not to tell my parents, or at least not till I was ready.

As soon as I was out the door, she called them. That day, I found out my mom didn't care if I wanted to kill myself as long as I didn't go around telling people and ruining her image.

After that, I started numbing my feelings in order to survive. I didn't care anymore. I slept, went to school, bathed, occasionally ate, and listened to music (this is where my twitter name comes from).

In 8th grade, it became too much and I started up the old habit again. I only did it a few times though, because it stopped helping after a while. To this day, no one knows.

Then came 9th grade. I started coming home from school and going straight to bed. Sometimes I'd sleep through the time I was supposed to leave for school the next day. I was a high-achiever and I hated having to miss school even though I hated school and everyone in it because my grades were what kept my parents from adding to my misery.

I'd also had to miss my after-school guitar class on a few occasions because of this, which I hated even more because it was the one thing in my life that made me happy.

We ended up moving that summer and I started 9th grade in America. Since the toxic environment was gone, I felt much better, and didn't give much thought to killing myself anymore. I thought that maybe I could finally live a normal life - finishing high school, going to college and getting a job.

Things were great for a while, other than the flashbacks. Those were getting less frequent with time though, or so I thought. 9th grade was great, and when I started 10th grade, I finally made my first real friend. I love her more than anything, in a platonic way.

I can remember things going great until about October 2014. My rollercoaster started coming down and I didn't know why. Once, I had a panic attack so bad that I had to go home. Other times, at home, I had flashback attacks. Before, it had only been single flashbacks that I could distract myself from, given the right distraction. Now there were just these flurries of auditory flashbacks that wouldn't stop and would hinder my work.

I guess it finally hit me that I have no idea what I want to do with my life.

When asked the question, "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" I can't answer. Of course, I have an answer, but it's not something I can say out loud.

I see myself being dead in 10 years. I don't want to want to die, but I don't see any other options at this point. As I mentioned in the first picture, I want to get help, but it seems to be currently impossible.


Now that I think about it, my relapse might have been because I realized that if I'm going to kill myself, it's going to be before graduation. I'm going to start 12th grade in about a month, so it's not far away at all.

I guess I never got past being suicidal after all.

Songs

#29 - School is Stressful and Procrastination causes Mental Breakdowns

I had a pretty easy year in 9th grade. I was good at most subjects taught in my classes (except essay writing), and even if I had no clue about the topics before, I could understand them pretty quickly. I did honors that year and got A's and B's.

In 10th grade, I decided to start doing pre-IB. I still didn't really have any problems with any of my classes, except that I wasn't motivated to do anything in French (which I'd decided to take alongside Spanish that year, which I had already been doing). That year, I got A's and B's, along with a single C in French.

This year is the real deal though. I'm in IB. It's really not that hard, unless you procrastinate a lot, which I (and 95% of my classmates) do. I'm horrible at English because my teacher only ever gives essays as assignments and grades them harshly. I have a D in that class, but that's my lowest grade. I have A's and B's in all my other classes.

The beginning of the year was pretty easy. We didn't get as much homework as we expected from IB, and therefore I didn't actually have to stay up till 4AM doing it, and I didn't see what all the fuss was about.

Now, though...

Since it's almost the end of the school year, and almost time for the AP exams, most of my classes are giving a shitload of work that wouldn't really seem like a shitload if I didn't procrastinate so much.

We have to do two chapters every week now instead of one in APUSH because we wouldn't finish in time for the AP exam if we didn't.

We just did our IB Film IAs and Oral Presentations...neither went particularly well for me because I suck.

We're doing a freaking music matrix in Music Theory and it is hard as fuck. Why do I have to do this? My teacher said even AP Music Theory students don't do it. I signed up for standard level Music Theory 1. We've gone through the workbooks for Music Theory 1-3, and now we're doing freaking matrices and soon we have to write a full composition and find performers to perform it live. I'm not even joking.

What do you mean this is hard?

We had to finish our documentary script for IB Film by Friday. It had to be an 8-10 page, two column script, with video on one side and audio on the other. Sure, we were already supposed to have half done, but I had to completely redo that half because I wrote about philosophy and how film reflects it, instead of, you know, how the film affects and changes the philosophy.

I was up till almost 3AM and there was a good half-hour where I just wanted to burst into tears because it was past midnight, I didn't even have the first half rewritten, I was tired, and my room smelled like cookies for no goddamn reason.

Me on Thursday night/Friday morning

Tonight I would've done the same for the first 4 pages of my math IA that are due tomorrow, except that we had all week in class to work on it, and I'm not one to sit idle in class. I've got 4 pages, I just need to fill them in a bit more. It won't keep me up till 2AM.

I still have homework to do though. I should probably go. But tumblr.

Songs

#28 - Should त्र really be its own letter in Hindi? + Names

It's 1AM and I have no idea how my mind wandered down the rabbit hole to get from shipping kpop idols to questioning the importance of certain "letters" in my second language, but it's happened, and I'm not the least bit sleepy anyways.

NOTE: Since it is 1AM, I cannot guarantee a continuing, cohesive train-of-thought.

Why is "त्र"/"tr" its own letter? It is literally the letter "t" with the vowel symbol ("matra") for "r" under it. Others like "क्र"/"kr" and "ग्र"/"gr" aren't considered separate letters, even though they're the exact same case as "त्र". I don't understand why this particular combination is an exception. To me, it's almost like considering "à" and "á" separate letters in French, but not "è" and "é", "i" and "ï", "c" and "ç"...you get my point.

Another thing I don't understand is old versions of some letters. For example, this is (apparently) an old version of "a":

That is a "p" with a half "tr" and an additional "r" matra. And apparently it's meant to be "a". It looks like "trpra" to me, and I can't even pronounce that. Actually, I can, but it sounds less like meaningful language and more like I'm imitating a cartoon laser gun.

It reminds me of that time I read about a couple who tried to name their baby some weird, ridiculously long name with no vowels and insisted it was supposed to be pronounced "Alvin".

It may seem that I'm trying to appear to be an expert on Hindi, but I'm not. I only learned the language for 7 years, starting when I was 7. I still pronounce "ढ़" and "ड़" (variations of "ra") the same , not to mention "न" and "ण" ("na") and "श" and "ष" ("sha")! It's not a dialect thing either - I simply never learned the difference. I'll screw up on my phonetic spelling (when I don't already have the spelling memorized) sometimes or most of the time if the letters aren't the simple ones, i.e. - "र" for "ra", "न" for "na" and "श" for "sha".

This is me when I'm writing Hindi.

It is even difficult for me to write my real life name in Hindi. Since I was named in English and my name can have multiple spellings in Hindi, I can mess around with the spelling to make it easier for me, but my parents gave me the most complicated one they could for my name when I was just starting out.

At this point, I don't use that name anymore except on official documents and stuff, and since I live in the USA, my name is English-only. In real life, I use the name "Aki"/"Aqui" because, you know, it's easy and actually means something to me. The meaning of my real name might as well be nonexistent. It is literally a word people who speak Hindi instead of Hinglish might use in everyday conversation. It's one of the first things you learn in school/daycare:

Shape.

My name means shape.

Why would someone give their child such a meaningless name?

On the other hand, my "name", Aki/Aqui, means so much to me. In Japanese, Aki means "autumn". In Spanish, Aqui means "here". Not only is autumn my favorite season because of the weather (my soul lives, dies and resurrects by the weather, I swear), but the two meanings together give me hope.

WARNING: CHEESINESS AHEAD

Here's the meaning I found in my "name" that gives me hope:

It may be the autumn of my life, but it is not yet winter. I am still here and my life still has time to work out.

I guess names are like life. Your life doesn't have any meaning unless you give it some. Names by themselves mean nothing.

What's in a name? What's in a person? It wouldn't really matter to history if someone else had done that really important thing all those years ago, assuming the same circumstances. Oh my god.

---
This ended up ending like every single paper I ever have to write. I wonder if the teachers realized I'm having an existential crisis yet...

Q. The supernatural plays an important role in Richard III and those who ignore it do so at their own peril. Discuss.

A. Since the supernatural plays such a key role in bringing about god's plans anyway, the characters couldn't escape their fate even if they tried, so what would be the point?

Q. Write down one (or several) ideas for song lyrics.
A. Achieving your life goal and feeling lost about what to do next

Q. Compare a silent era film technique to a modern era film technique
A. *Writes about long shots and exaggerated actions, which evolves into talking about Slow Cinema, which evolves into talking about the Slow Food Movement, which evolves into talking about the flaws of modern life*

#27 - Oldest Child Problems

I haven't posted in about 2 months, and it's 12:30 on a school night, so let's get this over with.

This is basically a rant about why I think being the oldest sibling is hard.

1. You're the "experimental child" - Your parents use you to figure out how to parent. Sometimes they don't even learn from it and you end up facing the consequences:
2. You might end up being a surrogate parent to younger siblings - My parents did a lot of "bookish parenting" with me, making me fiercely independent by age 3 (I refused to sleep in their bed by then). Since I was so independent (and not "child-like"), they decided to shower my brother with tons of affection to let him "be a child." Yeah, guess who had to make him start dressing himself at age 10 (mom did it for him up till then!) Also, I had no friends because taking care of him took too much time.
3. If your siblings outgrow you (in height), you might get their hand-me-downs despite being older - I used to get my brother's hand-me-down pants until a year or two ago. Then he got too big and even his outgrown clothes wouldn't fit me anymore. I haven't grown for 4 years, so I would never "grow into them." Good thing, too. I never liked those pants.
4. You get blamed for everything - My mom accidentally slapped me in the eyeball once when my brother was wrong in a factual argument and I was trying to get him to understand why he was wrong. Also, every time I disagree with something he does, mom tells him, "He's crazy. Stay away from him." Also, um, I'm still not the one responsible for those bad grades on his report card in elementary school. Shocking, right?
5. If your sibling is having a tough time, your parents might forget you exist, because "you're old enough to handle yourself" - I was eight. Eight. Was being the oldest child supposed to negate that fact? Maybe that's why I'm short. No one was there to make sure I ate my veggies. Or any food for that matter.
6. They get privileges earlier than you did, and they don't even have to work for it - I had to patiently wait for my 12th birthday to get the crappiest phone ever (smartphones were still pretty new and, even then, they were the kind that still had slide-out keyboards). My brother basically whined, "He has one! Why can't I have one? I WANT ONE NOW!" And one he got...He was 10, and his phone was better than mine. What happened to that "we'll give it to you when you prove you're mature enough" crap? (PS: He lost that phone a few days later and the adults had to track it down. HA!)
7. You wonder how you'll sustain yourself and your siblings if your parents die - You're next in line to be the breadwinner.
8. Your parents expect more of you than them - You get a B+ and it's the end of the world. They get a C- and they get a reward for their "good grade." It's hard not to feel like there's some favoritism going on.
9. Because you have to take care of them, they outshine you socially - Remember that part where I said I didn't have any friends because taking care of my brother took too much time? He still had a quite active social life at school, and was quite popular. Not to brag, but I was one of the best athletes in my grade, and I was by far the most knowledgeable on computers, which was a class we had to take. No one cared though, because my brother was more popular and I didn't matter as much as him.
10. You have to be careful of everything you do, because otherwise your parents will be on your back about being a "bad influence" - I'm 16. I've been an older brother since I was 2, and I've had this "don't be a bad influence to the little one" stuff pushed on me since then. Seriously, when do I get to be a kid and make mistakes? You know, like a normal kid?
11. Their teachers don't consider you a separate entity from them - Once upon a time, I was in 7th grade. I was sitting in science class, learning, when a student from 5th grade came and told me the aerobics teacher wanted to see me. I went and it turned out she wanted me to teach my brother how to tie his shoes. Sure, I'll do that! It's not like it would've taken you less time to teach him yourself than to call me and have me teach him, and I definitely wasn't just sitting in class having my own academic life.

This child -"I have decided to regress to a baby to be like the youngest child, thereby getting more attention and empathy. Is it working yet?"

Songs on my mind:

 (Pandora is a wonderful thing, isn't it?)

#26 - Summer vacation

I have been a very competitive student for as long as I can remember. I tend to turn in my homework on time, even if I have to stay up all night and even then finish during lunch. I am also disappointed in myself whenever I get a grade lower than an A.

A few days ago, summer vacation started and I have no idea what to do with my life because there is no more school for 2.5 months (which is a bit too long if you ask me). So guess what? I decided to do an online course instead - Economics with Financial Literacy Honors. I started it on Thursday, the last day of school, because I literally could not stand not having anything school-related to do.

I have even prepared my binders for next year. I have them labeled, with all the required binder tabs also labeled. I still have to go to the bookstore/library to get my summer reading books for English and physics, and I hope reading those will fill my time as there is really no assignment to go along with them except "take notes".

I don't know what to do with my life without school. Maybe I should get a job?

~Later in the day~

I just got a new video camera! I think I will start making youtube videos now. Maybe my first topic should be about the summer.

#25 - Coin Collecting

My grandma used to collect coins when she was alive. Unfortunately, she died of cancer back in 1995, back before my parents had even met.

Earlier this year, my grandpa died too, so we went to his house for his funeral. We ended up finding one of my grandma's coin collections and we brought it back.

When we got back home, the coins were given to me, along with coins my parents had saved from when my dad went overseas for his business trips and when we went abroad on vacation (not often). My love for coin collecting was reawakened from when I was a child.

When I was little, I would "collect" coins, and subsequently spend them. I was a stupid kid.

When I grew up a little, I started liking the coins my dad brought back from overseas. I would also give my parents coins that I thought had value for collecting, and they would keep them in the lockable closet.

I still like overseas coins.

My grandma had a coin from 1877, and even she wasn't born back then (my grandpa was born in 1945, and she was younger). Since people were having kids so young then, it might even be from her great grandparents. This coin is at least 7 generations old!


According to this website, the coin is worth either $20 or $60.

After I got all those coins, I started collecting my own coins again - just those in circulation here in the US though. I have so far collected 43/56 statehood/US territories quarters, 9 presidential dollars, 9/56 national park quarters (still being issued), and a few miscellaneous nickels, dimes, and pennies. I even have a half dollar coin.

I hope I actually continue into and beyond 2021, when the last national park quarters are issued. Also I hope that my dad goes back to my grandparents' general area soon and brings back my grandma's other collection, which was full of coins with holes in the middle.

#24 - Mandate-imposed US drinking age - Unconstitutional?

As you might know, all US states have a minimum drinking age of 21 because the federal government threatened to cut highway funding by 10% for any state that didn't raise it from whatever it was to 21.

The thing is: Is it even constitutional?

You see, 18-year-olds are allowed to:

1. Serve in the military
2. Get married
3. Leave home without being considered a runaway
4. Buy/rent a house
5. Buy/rent a car
6. Sue or be sued
7. Be sentenced to death
8. Vote
9. Adopt a child
10. Get an abortion
11. Consent to sexual activity with other adults (and even buy and star in pornography)
12. And do other adult things (because they are adults)

So then why can't they drink? They have a say in who gets to run their damn country but they don't have a say in what they do to their own damn body?

They are adults by law, aren't they? Isn't this age discrimination?

Didn't we learn anything from the Prohibition?


Remember Korematsu v. US, in which a Japanese-American man dared to ask what trial he had, by what jury, and how he was convicted of being sent to an internment camp? The answer? "It's for everyone's safety." His crime? Being Japanese-American.


For those using the argument about safety:

Do you really think the raising of the age limit is the only factor that contributed to the steady decline in drunk driving accidents in this age group since the mandate was passed? Of course not. There are also other factors such as improvement in awareness and education of drunk driving and its consequences.

What makes it alright to give 18-20-year-olds less rights than 21-year-olds? They are legal adults in every other sense, we think they should know what to do with their body if they might know they want to sacrifice it fighting for their country.

...Said a legal adult to another legal adult

Also, they can make their voice heard about who they want to be the leader of their country. The leader of their entire nation, which has over 300 million people (yes, one vote can make or break the election). Yet they are not considered mature enough to decide what to do with their own bodies?

You know, in my residential state of Florida, we can get a hunting license without parental consent at the age of 16. They can kill animals on their own, without supervision, but they can't drink. They can be responsible for other beings' bodies, but not their own...Makes no sense to me.

Last but not least, like all humans, they learn from experience. People don't just wake up on their 21st birthday and have an epiphany about responsible drinking.

Basically, 18-20-year-olds are adults. A-D-U-L-T-S. They should have the same rights as other adults. They are not children, as they have reached the age of consent.


Whether or not you think it is alright should not be up for debate. Who are you to deny another group their freedom?

Also, just so you know, all those "studies" about alcohol affecting brain growth are also known to use extremely high amounts of alcohol which would cause brain damage to any human 21-and-older just as much as any human 18-20. Also I am not in the age group of 18-20. I do not advocate binge drinking or minors drinking, but I believe that people who are adults by law should be covered by its full extent.

Remember when 18-20-year-olds got the right to vote because of the draft?

The legal age is 18. Let's keep it that way.