hi. long time, no writing. how have you all been? my university blog that i write for uses wordpress, but i still don’t fully understand the interface, so i’m not sure whether you can actually comment responses on these blog posts. feel free to give me a life update on my twitter at any time though. people don’t really dm me anymore, and i’m not sure why. maybe it’s because i don’t write fics as often now, or because i have more followers so i seem more intimidating? i miss when people would interact with me though; i made a lot of my closest friends through one of us randomly dming the other about an interest or specific tweet that resonated.

anyway. i have less than a week of my first year of college left. it feels a bit surreal, but also… correct. good, almost. like i did my time, or like time passed at the speed it was supposed to, if that makes sense. my roommates and i made our final poll on our whiteboard “what’s been a favorite memory from this school year?” and i’m already so excited to see what people are going to write. one of my closest friends (alternatively: a boy who i randomly dubbed my best friend during the first three weeks of school), wrote, “making friends with everyone on this floor first semester.” and my heart broke with love just a little bit at that.

i don’t know what my favorite memory has been. i’ve had a really, really wonderful college experience so far. maybe my japanese american club retreat this spring, or the countless game nights my floor has hosted. in high school i used to dream about being as happy as i am now. would stay up late into the night and stare at the new mexico-shaped ceiling of my childhood bedroom, praying for my anti-depressants to just. do. something. (fun fact: i’m actually on anti-depressants for obsessive compulsive disorder purposes, not depression ones. lol.) i don’t know if i’ve been this happy since bits and pieces of eighth grade, where i had a best friend and a friend group i would give the world to. i am so, so fortunate to be where i am.

i’m tired, and i’m going to haul my ass out of bed tomorrow morning at nine am so that i can shower and attend my final temple service before i leave the state and return to my home state in a week. getting into jodo shinshu buddhism has been one of the most unexpectedly rewarding things i’ve done this school year. practicing the religion of my ancestors, though i don’t consider myself very religious—spiritual more than anything else, really—makes me feel connected to my japanese heritage. the hondo, or temple hall, smells so much like home. like my great-grandmother’s home in shizuoka. i remember kneeling at the butsudan, or family buddhist altar within the home, and realizing how much more powerful it felt to pray when i actually knew some of the meaning behind the ritualistic actions. this summer, i think i’ll make the commute from my suburb into the city so i can keep attending jodo shinshu buddhist temple services. i think, just maybe, they make me a better person. every time i leave the temple, i feel better than i did when i came in. isn’t that special.

i don’t think i wrote an update about this, but i finally finished the short film i’ve been directing for the last eight weeks. it’s… not great. it’s good, i think, but there were so many issues with editing and audio and an unholy number of all-nighters pulled by our editing team to even get it into the rough shape it’s in now. when the film premiered, i was mildly mortified just because from a technical aspect, it was so much lower quality than the other films made by my film club. this was to be expected considering our director of photography wasn’t super advanced, and our designated editor went MIA pretty early on, but it still made heat rush to my cheeks.

while writing the screenplay for this project and directing it, and even while editing, i didn’t feel much emotion. but when i watched my film on the large projector at our film club’s project premiere and the “in memory of” card came up right before the rolling credits, i found myself sobbing. i ran out of the auditorium with my heart in my fucking stomach, hot tears streaming down my cheeks. i remember a boy from my club i don’t know well saw me crying and said, not unkindly, “don’t be sad. the audio of your film wasn’t that bad.” i wanted to kill him, just a little, or at least give him a good slap to the cheek. how dare you think i’m crying for such a superficial reason as my audio being bad, i almost wish i could’ve said to him. my sister’s friends are dead and they always will be, and you think i’m tearing up over audio issues. because that’s what it was, really: recognizing the permanence of death. seeing that in memory card made me remember that the boys my sister loves are never coming back, and we have to learn how to live with that. we have to live with that for the rest of our lives.

it’s hard for me to say i’m proud of my film. i know that’s for the same reason my older sister told me she’s never made a painting about either of her late friends that she feels proud of. but i think i got some closure from this journey, the way my therapist said i probably would, and i like to imagine that counts for something.

i think calico by ryan beatty might be a perfect album. i finished rewatching / relistening to your lie in april a few days ago (my watch journey bled into may), and it was nice. every time i rewatch that series, i rediscover or find something new to love about it. my roommates and i finished the show fleabag a while back, and the second season was so good that i feel the need to mention it here. content warning for spoilers of fleabag season two ahead.

i’m still thinking about the scene in the last episode where fleabag tells the priest that she loves him, and he responds by squeezing her and saying, so tenderly, “it’ll pass.”

fleabag spoilers over.

as more and more time elapses, i understand what my older sister meant when she said it’s normal to be obsessed with your first love. the first boy i ever loved appears in my dreams more often than i’d like. i think of him more often than i’d like.

there’s a poem by sue zhao called “leaving” that i think really encapsulates a lot about how i feel about him and our former relationship:

“2.

saturday sunset and all i can do is wonder if i ever cross your mind. i wish i could write to you. someday, a long and beautiful letter. but things are often beautiful when the only purpose for them is beauty. anyway, what would i say? what would be fair, after all this time? thank you. sorry. leaving you was much harder than i could have imagined. i remember you more often than i’d like. i wish we hadn’t stopped talking. i miss you but i can’t remember what it is that i miss.

3.

[…]

i wish we hadn’t lost touch but i understand why we did. i wish i could call you now and hear your voice. i understand why you wouldn’t answer.”

tomorrow, or today, i guess, i have to write an entire research essay on the role of buddhism among the japanese american community, particularly during incarceration. i learned that it was because of incarceration that japanese buddhism became westernized; that time period is when the official language of the temples switched to english, temples were renamed churches, etc. that makes me indescribably sad. i don’t want to write that essay. but i know it won’t be as bad as i’m chalking it up to be. it never is. apart from my essay, i have one last final, and that’s my racial domination sociology final on friday at seven pm. i have some notes to finish taking for it. i think i’ll be okay though.

after an embarrassing amount of FOMO caught up to me, as did my friend luka’s artwork, i watched trigun stampede. i liked the series. i like the pairing of vash and wolfwood because they are So Doomed By The Narrative. but that also makes something in me ache. a good ache, though, like pressing on a bruise. i’m currently working on a fic about them, and it was supposed to just be a mindless nsfw piece, but to be completely honest, it’s horribly tender and primarily introspection. i think a lot of my fics end up that way. this summer i plan to read the trigun manga.

i still associate manga and anime with my former boyfriend. i wonder if i always will. i wonder if—no, i know—that’s why i stayed away from both things for so long.

it’s now 1:15 am and my laptop is at twelve percent. i need to be up in less than eight hours. i’ll sleep, and then go to work, and then finish my final, and then hopefully get to rest.

and this is where i leave you.