loopholes

Lately I feel less and less like I belong. I guess the absence of the 08ers is really starting to get to me. My closest friends are officially all alumni, Jared and Breah included, and my Hunterloo goes to a different school. I suppose the time I spend in school during senior year will be devoted to studying and trying to dodge the legion of people who hate/dislike me.

In no particular order: Christina, Ashley, Cecily, Aubrey, Shawna, Cassandra, Jenni, Dustye, and whoever else they can recruit. Half of them just don't like me because they became friends with someone who didn't like me, and most of them are friends with each other. Tied together by their mutual hatred of Hanna. Touching.

I don't know. Everyone I've talked to thinks it's just because they consider me some kind of fierce competition. I know I've got a couple of talents, but I'm not terribly cocky about them. I always keep that in check. I suppose that might be misread from how I overcompensate for my mixedness by acting confident. In a passage from The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath described how her headmaster ate his salad very strangely: leaf by leaf with his fingers. But he did it so surely that he made it seem as though everyone's been eating salad that way for years. That can kinda be applied to what I do; I try to convey self-confidence in an effort to make being mixed seem like a normal thing. Especially when I get "the stare."

"The stare" says, "I can't quite tell what you are, but I know you're different, and I'm going to scrutinize everything about your physical appearance, speech, and body language until I figure it out. And if I can't, I'll come up and ask you. Somewhat rudely." And eventually they come up and ask, somewhat rudely, "What are you?" I always give them a questioning look, even though I know exactly what the hell they're asking. I just don't want them to know that I think it's odd, too, or that will just confirm their opinion on it and maybe make me seem vulnerable.

Usually I get, "Oh. You're pretty," or "Oh. That's cool," or the worst, "Oh. That's...different."

Different. Yeah, like I don't fucking know.

I can't help but think that maybe I'd be met with less enmity if I were fully white or fully Taiwanese. I'm different enough. A normal ethnicity might've at least let me feel like I fit in a little, but no. I don't even get to fit in on the most superficial level. I get stuck with this half white, half Taiwanese gig. And there's another thing! Taiwanese. I never even tell them specifically I'm half Taiwanese. I just say Asian, because they always get it wrong and think I'm from Thailand. See, that just makes shit more complicated. I can't even have a generally understood mix. Almost everyone alive knows what China is, and anyone with an imagination can put two and two together and figure out how the features affected my face and hair. But no, I get this little island that no one's ever heard of, so then they make me explain more and spend more time feeling awkward, and watch me rapidly lose my grip on the confidence facade until they can clearly see the insecurity written all over my face and they know that I'm different and they know that I'm different and I can just feel myself getting categorized in those first five seconds by a complete, stupid stranger who doesn't know the first thing about who I am, about the depth to my soul and the complexities of my mind and the purity in my heart, and

...fuck my life.

Except the Hunter part!

He's all upset now because he thought that applied to him. He reads into things way too much. I think sometimes he'll start an issue up even though he knows that I didn't mean it that way, just to hear me confirm (a thousand times) that I didn't mean it that way. But he doesn't do it for too terribly long, so I let him get away with it.

I didn't really mean for this post turn into such a rant about my mixedness. I've just been feeling really negative about it lately, and I've been partially blaming it for my unpopularity. I guess I just kinda ran off the tracks with it. I meant to spend part of this entry talking about how senior year outside of school would be awesome, because I can drive around with Hunterloo all the time and have fun and Sonic tea and amazing sex. So now I'm going to get on with the good part.

Things with Hunter are fantastic. He's really bloomed open now, right in time with the bright orange lilies in the backyard that come back annually. A lot of our conversations are happy sweet talk, not to mention sexually charged...but who's complaining? Not me. We've actually already had a few arguments, but I've chalked it up to the "things we did while broken up" shock. It really isn't important, and I don't think either of us really even care anymore. We really just argue to stop worrying. All that matters anymore is the renewal of our connection.

And it's nothing short of spectacular, not to mention impenetrable(so, unfortunately, is my vagina). We should stop being insecure about it.

Big hint to my stalker.