November 27, 2005

I am now officially 25! I shared the day with close family and friends in an intimate gathering at my friend, Brian Woo’ s residence in San Francisco.

Besides a beautiful ring and jewelry making kit from Louis and pretty drop earrings from Barbara, I didn’t receive many gifts. In dedication to my late cousin, Michael Greenway, I requested instead, that people donate to the Holland Opus Foundation for kids who were musically gifted but living in underserved communities. I would like to personally thank Mike Mahler, Irene Tosetti, Randy Macaranas, Nisha Saini, Minji Wong, Cory Hirnrichs and Louis Dorman for their kind donation to my Life Tribute to Michael. Any gift, regardless of amount, meant so much to me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I sincerely feel blessed to be surrounded by compassionate spirits without our collective souls, mine individual spirit would weaken.

The best gifts came from donations and support from people I didn’t personally know…as well as the attendance of friends who made small efforts to celebrate a small moment in time with me. I find myself constantly reaching out reaching out to people I resonate or connect with people who comprehends life challenges, struggles, pains and passions for life. If I didn’t find people who I can communicate with, I would feel sooo alone.

When I first created this website in March, I didn’t know what I was doing: I just knew that I had a lot going on in my mind, and I needed to expel it somehow. I needed to write hoping that someone was reading and understanding where I was coming from. I was hoping that someone would resonate with my journals or poems and understand how it felt like to feel empty, anxious, passionate, excited, sad, enthusiastic and even alone.

The continuous waves of Cause and Effect in life happen simultaneously inside every event, every decision, every cell in all organisms of life. I was born essentially from an Effect rippling after a Cause…there is a reason why I reached the age of 25, why I chose certain friends, chose to read specific books, chose to work in fitness, chose to care so much & love so much & feel so much. We are all born from a Unique Cause and designed for a Specific Purpose.

Lately, I ve been emotional. Louis has been working on making future journal entries more efficient for me because he expressed that because he enjoyed reading my insights, he didn’t want me to quit writing my journals because it became too difficult to upload. At that moment, a storm of guilt and confusion overtook me.

When he said the word quit I felt like I was confronted with a new word I had never used. “Quit” isn’t a word often used in my vocabulary, for I NEVER give up until I finish what I set out to do. While I expressed the importance of determination last week, this week, I have to tell you: I felt like quitting. I wanted to feel normal & not care so much, work as hard, love so much & because I felt like while I didn’t expect reciprocation, the equilibrium between cost and reward of putting myself under challenging conditions amongst friends and families became truly imbalanced. I wanted to quit. I was tired of being the scapegoat. I was tired of trying so hard. I was tired of caring so much. And then I realized that while I was tired, I was still living and as long as I was living, I was still loving, and in order to love, I had to show compassion, understanding, selflessness and spiritual control. The moment I chose to mentally quit would also be the moment I would emotionally die, and I knew that the slow death of my physical body would soon precede these negative thoughts.

How painful is that? Choosing not to love, not to have passion for life & is almost like committing a personal sin: because lack of gratitude is toxic thought that creates mental suicide.

I haven t been in the writing mood lately and reading is taking the back burner. But I choose to continue writing this weekly still hoping to find more people to connect with- still hoping that someone out there would understand and see life through my eyes the eyes of a young spirit with an intense passion and curiosity for life, for the unknown, for the yet to comes, and for the only in your dreams…