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This week has been… very interesting. Last Monday, I passed out afterward since I didn’t get much sleep. On Tuesday, I met up with a friend, TW. We grabbed some disgustingly fat, but delicious chili cheese fries from Weinerschnitzel, a few beers, and then crashed at my place to eat. We both watched Wall-E for the first time. It was such a cute movie! I cried near the end because it looked sad. Sure, I knew that because it’s Disney, it wasn’t going to stay sad for long, but it was still a touching moment for me.

Wednesday was NN’s birthday dinner. Her birthday was actually Saturday, but I suppose that a good chunk of people could make it out, so she had two celebrations. One for those who were more available on Wednesday and one for those available on Saturday. We went out to AsiaSF, a place known for its transsexuals, which I didn’t know about until I had gotten there myself. The “girls” put on a nice little dance show for us. The food was alright, a bit overpriced, but it was all fun. Afterward, we headed out to Castro street and hit up a few bars/clubs: Skylark, The Bar, and Badlands. We got to meet Russell Brand at The Bar and it was awesome! He is much taller than I expected. I only remembered him from Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but apparently he hosted one of the MTV award shows and was recently a part of a prank too. All in all, it was a pretty fun night. Slight drama, but nothing major.

On Thursday, there was a VSA general meeting and then the plan after that was to hit up Blake’s, the only 18+ club in Berkeley. However, since it’s in the middle of the semester, very few people showed up, so I left early, probably around midnight or so. On my way out, I ended up meeting two dudes from Wisconsin. One is a graduate student and the other, his brother (both in the familial and fraternity sense apparently), was visiting different schools for his graduate studies. Anyway, they invited me for a drink at the bar across the street. Then they decided to get another one and since I wasn’t in the mood for my night to end yet, I went with. They seemed like relatively interesting fellows and usually my instincts are good about that. The next bar we hit up was Beckett’s where they proceeded to buy me another drink. This time, it was a Tokyo Tea. I don’t know what the alcohol level of that drink was, but I barely got through half of it before I was wasted. It was pretty awful. It was a fun night, I’ll admit that, but I can’t believe how quickly I got drunk off of one drink. Anyway, I got home safely, made sure to decline their invitation to head back to their place, and slept like a baby.

Friday was a long day. I had classes, then work, a small break, and then about three and a half hours of dance practice for VSA. It was also then that I started to feel sick too, so a lot was going on. On Saturday, I really felt the sickness coming in. My sinuses were getting clogged up, but I made it through the day. Saturday morning, I played touch football with a few other VSA members as we competed against Sigma Mu Delta, the pre-med fraternity. I knew that we weren’t going to win, but I just wanted to have a good time, which I did have. For lunch, I met up with my two freshman year roommates for a really belated birthday dinner. We had sushi and it was good just to catch up again. I tried my best to hurry to get to the South Bay to be with EC, but I didn’t end up getting there as early as I had expected. It was his friend’s birthday soiree, so we went out to dinner and had a few drinks with his friends. We went back to EC’s place, crashed, then really slept in. Well, at least I did. I was not only sick, but lacking sleep. I wanted to stay in as much as I could and besides, who doesn’t love waking up next to someone you’re fond of? He drove me back to Berkeley as I went back to dance practice again. I was really tired, so I did the best I could.

Today was an okay day. It was a little gloomy, but nothing too major. I had more dance practice and just some time to think about things. Last night after church, JL stopped by. We talked about a few things and he expressed his concern for me too.

Every time I tell someone that I’m in this casual relationship, they all ask me the same question: “Why are you in a relationship?” Nobody seems to understand that although he may not and I may not have complete intentions to settle down with one another or make this a serious relationship, it doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy each other enough to make it exclusive. It’s like what I did with DL. I knew that I was never going to settle down with him, I knew that there wasn’t going to be a “happily ever after” for us, but I stayed with him anyway because I had a good time. NN did the same with her previous boyfriend.

I’m just frustrated because nobody understands that logic. I’ll admit that I didn’t either, but it’s hard to understand something like this until you’ve done it yourself. I just really hate having to explain myself over and over again. I’d rather not tell people anything at this point. I understand that JL and others are concerned for me and for my feelings, but after what happened last year, I doubt that anything will come along anytime soon that will put me in that same position.

And they don’t understand that either! For SB, I would have given him everything. If we were to ever get to a “settling down” phase, I would have fought with my parents for their blessing. I would have sacrificed everything for him. After losing him and going through the heartbreak I went through, I don’t think anyone is going to make me feel the same way again, at least not anytime soon.

So why does everybody think that I’m going to get hurt? What if, for once, I don’t want to be in a serious relationship and worry about bringing him home to the parents or where we’ll live and what we’ll name the kids? What if I just want to have fun? Is that so hard to do?

But nobody understands. They tell me that I should not even be his “girlfriend.” They tell me that I should just be the fuck buddy. But nobody tells me that the understand and quite frankly, I don’t think anybody is really trying to understand where I’m coming from.

Recap of the weekend:

EC came up on Saturday. We had dinner at California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) and then watched Zack and Miri Make A Porno. It was a really funny movie. However, it was very borderline NC-17, so for those who aren’t into all the raunchy, dirty sex jokes and whatnot, I would not recommend this movie to you. Otherwise, you should check it out. EC ended up spending the night and then left Sunday morning. It was nice and quiet. I suppose that I made my decision by failing not to take action when I last wrote about the whole EC thing. I think that maybe, and this is just a maybe, I need some time to get used to the idea of making things casual. Okay, I have to admit that all this week, I made sure that I wasn’t going to initiate the first contact of the day. I think, in a way, that helps me distance myself from him because I’m not waiting for a reply, or waiting to see if he notices my text messages or emails or whatever it is I send him.

But again, this is all just “thinking.” I don’t know for sure and I won’t know for sure (until it’s too late) if I’m ready for all this “casual” stuff. I mean, yes, it’s nice knowing that I can see someone on a weekly basis, that he doesn’t mind making the drive to see me and won’t bitch about shit. Even if it doesn’t go much deeper, and I have to admit that I’m not all expecting it to, I think I’ll be okay. I like his company. I like the refreshing feeling that I get when I think back on how tied down I was to the last two boyfriends. EC is different. Money is not a big issue for us; I don’t feel as if I’m being guilted into doing something and I actually do want to go out because we can go out to the same places.

Everything is different and maybe that’s why I have the hope that I can get through this. I hope I can. I haven’t really thought much more about this whole casual thing in a way that would make me sad. Sure, I might not fall in love and he might not fall in love, but really, is that something that I should be worrying about now? Is that something that I should be looking for? I’m only 21 and since I do have a five-year dating minimum, then it’s going to be a while before I even bother to think about the serious stuff.

I think I can do it. This is fun and I don’t think I’ll mind too much if that’s all it is. I may not even be ready for something serious anyway so this… is refreshing. It’s good. It’s a new scene.

And speaking of refreshing, over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about where I was last year. One year ago, I was a mess. It was horrible. I know that in a few weeks, it’ll mark the anniversary of when I sent myself to the hospital. I look back on those times, that year and a half that was all about SB and I’m in awe. Looking back reminds me of Batman Begins because of how dark it is. In that movie, there was quite the grim feeling, no? So when I look back on my year and a half, I see darkness. I hid myself so much from him because I wanted to be somebody that he would love. I liked him and I knew that he was damaged and like a stereotypical woman, I wanted to fix him. I wanted to be the one. I wanted to make everything all better and I wanted him to love me.

Except, that failed miserably. I changed, if not disguised, myself to be the person that I thought he would want. I didn’t drink; I wasn’t social; I wanted to spend all of my time with him. It was very unhealthy.

When I look at how I’m living now, I see brightness. Or at least a clear contrast on my life then and now. Now, I’m not trying to please anybody but myself. Now, I don’t have to answer to anyone but me. I do what I want and I know what I want, or at least have a better idea of what I want. I want to be social, I want to drink, I want to go clubbing, I want to dress provocatively. I don’t want to try to change for someone, I don’t want to feel as if somebody else’s presence makes me want to be any different than what I want to be.

I guess what I want to say is that SB dragged me down into the hole. Or I allowed myself to be dragged into said hole. And now that he’s not here, not in my life and not affecting me emotionally to the point where my entire day is ruined, things feel better. I feel happier or more content with myself. I feel happier being me now than I did one year ago. And that, is something I’m grateful for.

We went to Kirala, a nice Japanese restaurant not too far from campus. We sat at the bar first while we waited for a better table to open up. The first one they had given us was all the way in the corner, passed the bathroom corridor and had some things flying around. I knew that she deserved better, so we told them we would wait. I ordered her the first drink and the night just kept on going. JYL never fails to provide a show when she’s tipsy or drunk. We had a lot of good laughs and I have to say the best part was when she ended up spitting her sake bomb out due to a dirty joke. Okay, maybe not the “best” since I was sitting directly to her right and got most of the spray, but it was pretty hilarious.

I got dropped off home and got ready for the next party. It was hosted by some people who happened to be in VSA as well. I guess I’m trying to make the distinction that it wasn’t necessarily a VSA party, but the word was spread out amongst us all. I dressed up as a pretty hot devil. I had my horns and and red corset from Frederick’s of Hollywood. The poor corset got dirty with chocolate though. A friend was trying to pour chocolate syrup into my mouth, but missed a lot and, well, it was pretty messy. I smelled like chocolate when I got home even though I tried to clean off as much as I could. The party was awesome. Lots of people, lots of alcohol. I’m pretty sure I was drunk by the time I left. However, I was able to walk on my own. I met a dude who was trying to hit on me and when he was walking me home, I had to mention that I had a boyfriend. He told me to “reconsider” it though.

Showered off and then I passed out. I like sleeping when drunk because it becomes such an awesome sleep. Sleeping like a baby, pretty much. Last night was the best I had had in a very long time, probably ever. Last year, I did nothing because I was still all wrapped up in SB. The year before I was at home with the parents who were pissed off at me. Two years ago (freshman year), I was on campus, but didn’t go anywhere nor did I dress up as anything. High school was a bust and so on.

I love the smell and feeling of rain.

Today, I’m not really going to go into the details of my last few weeks because at this point, it’s practically irrelevant. Instead, I’m going to write about what’s been on my mind for the last week or so.

After I had gotten back from Vegas, I met up with EC to have a nice dinner at home. We cooked food, etc, and I gave him his gift from Vegas. With said gift, I had also written a letter, just explaining why I had chosen the things I had chosen and just other random crap. I suppose that the letter gave him the impression that I wanted an actual relationship, so a few days later, he called me to talk.

He told me that what he was looking for out of this was something casual and fun. He enjoys my company, but doesn’t see me as a serious, long-term kind of relationship. I thought about all that for the day and realized that the only way I could keep it casual would be for me to drop the labels. Otherwise, I would just expect much more than he would deliver. When I told him that, he said that the labels didn’t matter to him. Maybe I was hearing what I wanted to hear, but when he told me that he had actually told his friends about me, it made me feel as if there was hope.

I know, I know that I should walk away. Everything is telling me to walk away before I get too far in and get myself hurt. But, I can’t seem to pry myself away. In front of him, I’m cool. I’m what he wants me to be: fun and casual. But behind the scenes, I think about it constantly. I see other couples and I think to myself that they have something I can’t have. Even though by definition, I’m in the same damn thing that they are, they will always have something more than I will ever have.

I should leave, but I’m afraid to be alone. Sure, in a way, I’m still “alone” now considering how frequently I see him, but it’s a different kind of alone. I guess that in a way, I want to know that there’s someone, someone who’s supposed to be more than a friend, that someone, will care about me.

But I’m really fooling myself. I know that he’s got his mind set and once a man has that done, there’s rarely any way for me, a mere woman, to change that. If I’m not going to be his serious relationship, then I’m not going to be.

Everything is telling me to leave, but I’m too afraid, too hopeful, too stupid.

All I want is for someone to realize how awesome I am and for that someone to be someone that I need, someone that I want. I haven’t had one long term relationship or friendship with anyone for so long. I don’t remember the last time I could hold onto someone for longer than a year (except a couple).

With SB, I was always searching for love, I wanted him to love me. And now with EC, I know that it’s not going to happen. I know, but I still hope.

I feel so foolish and yet, so immobile.

The reason why I haven’t been able to update as frequently in the last few days is because I’ve been drugged up. Even when I wrote that last post, I was drugged up. On Saturday, I went to the dentist and had him extract two teeth to make room for the whole braces operation. Afterward, I passed out for five hours, despite getting a lot of sleep the night before.

Yes, the extraction hurts like a bitch and it’s starting to hurt again now. I think my pain either got worse, as in I may have done something to make it worse or it got worse on its own, or I’ve developed a higher tolerance for Advil. If so, then I’m fucked. Seriously, they should have just given me Vicodin or something. What pisses me off more is that when I had my wisdom teeth pulled (yes, I did both of them separately), it didn’t hurt this much for this long. I was fine after a day or two. But this pain? It’s immense. I can cry with this pain because it’s that horrible.

And of course, I’m braving it all out again by going back this Saturday to pull out the other two. I’m fucked.

I have other things on my mind as well, but at the moment, since the pain is returning, this is all I can think about.

Saturday

JYL and I woke up to grab some breakfast. We were planning to go to the pool and tan, but it was really cold that day. I know, go figure right? Las Vegas is a desert except for that freakishly cold day. Anyway, since we could tan, we headed out to go shopping again. We were on our way to Sephora when we passed by O’Sheas, the Irish casino. I had noticed on Friday, but today, since we had nothing better to do, I decided that we should go in to play a game of beer pong.

Yes, beer pong. That place is freaking awesome for its beer pong tables. I was planning on just buying pitchers and stuff, but I noticed that two guys had were looking for people to play with, so I volunteered us both. We had a good game; we were both at 1 and 1. They made the shot and in order for us to prolong the game, we needed to make the shot too. JYL missed, but I made it in. In the end, we lost, but it was all fun and games. We exchanged numbers and that’s the last we saw or heard of them.

JYL is so funny when she drinks. It doesn’t take much for her to feel the effects of drinking and when she does, she’s all giddy and happy.

As we were leaving the casino, CZ called and said that he and his friends were standing in line at the Wynn buffet for lunch if we wanted to join, so we hopped into a cab and off we went. It was good food. Sure, I kept to a lot of soft stuff, but nonetheless, very yummy.

After lunch, we headed back to CZ’s hotel room (because that’s where everybody else was staying too) to just chill. We then decided to hit up a strip club, the Spearmint Rhino. NZ bought me my first (and second too) lap dance. They were pretty interesting. The first, she was new, at least to Las Vegas anyway, and she had fake boobs. However, I did like her costume and her butt. The second lady was a little more friendly and a little more enjoyable. It was all-in-all a good time.

We got back to the hotel to change for dinner. We headed downstairs to eat a burger joint before all of us went to Pure, the nightclub at Caesar’s. The line wasn’t as easy to go through like at Tao, but we got in. It was so crowded though; it made the dancing a little less enjoyable and a lot more squished. At one point, I suggested that we leave and come back because my feet were killing me. The shoes I had worn, even though I was able to run in them, were hurting my thighs as I tried to dance and it made the entire situation very uncomfortable. I also noticed that the purse I was holding, a sequined purse, kept snagging onto my dress, which eventually ruined the fabric (thankfully it was cheap), but also gave everybody else and myself cuts on my hands and thighs.

I quickly ran upstairs to change and when we came back down, we had decided not to return to a nightclub, but to go to another strip club, Seamless. It was different that the Spearmint Rhino since it was brighter and had a different style of music. The Spearmint was kind of dark and slow, probably to suit other types of customers. By the time we had arrived, I was so tired that it was hard for me to stay awake. We didn’t stay long and nobody really got a lap dance anyway.

What made the night a little worse was the immense cold. I hate the cold; I get cold pretty easily. That night though, it was so cold that I could swear that death, if not then something horrible, was on my brink. I was so cold, I had a hard time speaking and if I did, it was in a tiny voice. I was shivering really bad and it was just an all-around horrible feeling. I felt as if I was naked in a patch of snow or something. Not that I would know what it would feel like, but that’s what it felt like to me.

After that, we passed out for the night.

Sunday

JYL and I had to wake up really early that morning because JYL had signed up to go skydiving. She had chosen the later time, but since it was really windy in Vegas at the time, they pushed her jump time to noon. Because of that, we needed to get her to the airport by 10 am. The plan was for JYL, CZ, and I to cab share to the airport since it would have cost about $80, but when we called CZ, he wanted to sleep more since all of us had gotten in late. Because of that, we were scrambling to find a way to get there. We headed downstairs and rented a car in my name since JYL doesn’t have a license. The plan was to drive her there, go back to the Strip to pick up CZ, and then come back in time to see her jump, but when I returned with CZ, she had already jumped and was back on land.

We got back to the hotel and were so tired for not having slept a lot the night before that JYL and I passed out for a few hours. We woke up and decided to go with NN to find her a new purse. She and RS ended up winning about $15k (yes, that is correct) at the craps table, so she wanted to spend her money on a nice purse. She wanted a Louis Vutton but couldn’t find the style she liked so she ended up with (another - she bought one the first time they won last year) Gucci purse. We waked around with her and her friends for a while until we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

All seven of us, RS, NN, JYL, NN’s friends, and I headed to the Wynn buffet for dinner. That was also very yummy. They had creme brulee that was amazing. Makes me miss it all over again just thinking about it now. We were so stuff after dinner that we went back to the hotel to pack. Since most of CZ’s friends had already headed back to the real life, he was in the hotel room alone. NN and I suggested that JYL head over to spend some quality time with him before we headed back to the real world too.

Monday

We woke up so early to head back to Berkeley; I was really tired. We slept on the plane and even after that, I was really tired. I tried to go to school and stayed for an hour at work, but didn’t get much done. I was able to pick up some origami papers to make stars, but that’s about it.

Anyway, tired at the moment. I can’t seem to continue thinking more about my days, so maybe later I will update some more.

Wednesday

I got the brackets for my braces put in. My mouth was so sore afterward because the attendant had to mold the back bracket around my teeth but was having trouble and had to keep stretching out my face in order to insert it. She had been yanking on it so much that it got ridiculously dry and scabbed a little on my face throughout the weekend. Yes, that hurt. I had to miss all of my classes for that so I ended up taking care of my errands… last minute packing, dropping off the cake, getting my manicure and pedicure. The whole deal.

Then, dinner finally came around. JYL stopped by to just drop off a present and left. A part of me is a little disappointed but considering that she was going with me to Las Vegas, I let it go. I had quite a few people show up. EC gave me a bouquet of pink roses and a box of Godiva dark chocolate. Okay, I have to admit that as nice as that is, I feel as if it was so generic! Perhaps there is some reason behind all that, but I think I’ll let it go. I had a hard time trying to figure out his gift from Vegas too. The night was pretty awesome. I had dinner, shots, and my first hangover! Okay, it was very short-lived, but at least it was there! (I had to wake up to pee at some point during the night and felt awful. I fell asleep again and woke up fine)

Thursday

EC left early in the morning to head to work. I hated letting him leave, but I had to. I needed to get up to take my Vietnamese midterm and then get ready to fly out. JYL and I flew in pretty okay. Las Vegas was windy but it was warm. We got to the room at Caesar’s, which was completely awesome. We got a pretty view of the Bellagio water show from where we were staying. NN, JYL and I went downstairs for a bit to just walk around. When the others had arrived, we headed back upstairs to get dressed and ready to start the night.

E, RS’s housemate (RS = NN’s boyfriend), has some friends living in Las Vegas, so they were able to get us into Blush, a nightclub at the Wynn hotel. I was expecting a dance club, but it was more of a lounge. At first, I didn’t mind. They hooked us up with bottle service so that was nice. However, it was a bottle of Belvedere vodka and after the lady had mixed the first drink, I decided that I hated it. It was awfully strong and tasted nasty. JYL wasn’t a big fan of it either and we both came off as a bit ungrateful. I didn’t mean to; I was just expecting something different and was taken by surprise by what I was given. It was nice of them to get us all of that, but it was not the scene I was prepared for.

Friday

JYL and I woke up relatively early, but then realized that we all needed to wake before 11 since we were moving out of Caesar’s and into the Paris hotel across the street. We were uncertain if we would be able to check-in before their normal check-in time, but it was fine. Once we got to the room, we noticed an awful smell, but couldn’t determine where it came from. RS went back downstairs to get us a different room and while he did that, the rest of us were just hanging out. I decided to rest my head on a pillow when I smelled something so fucking awful. When I turned the pillow around, I saw puke. Yes, puke. Before RS came back, another friend called in a housekeeper and she started to take off all the sheets. When she did that, she discovered more vomit at the foot of the bed and that was then we knew we had to leave. Luckily, the new room didn’t stink.

NN, JYL, and I decided to go shopping that day. We walked down the strip stopping by Margaritaville first to get a drink. We ended up at the mall where I then bought my new Halloween costume. I had bought a corset with bunnies on it earlier at Hot Topic, but seeing the mannequin in Frederick’s with that devil costume made me want to switch. So I bought the corset, devil kit (headband, tail, and trident), and the bottom skirt. I don’t like the skirt however and have something at home that works just as well, so I’m going to return that. We were at the mall for quite some time and then we headed back to the hotel to rest and whatnot.

On the way to the mall, we were stopped by a promoter for the Tao nightclub, located inside The Venetian. He gave us free VIP passes and kept checking up on us to see if we were going. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were so tired, we took a nap. NN had decided that she was going to stay in for the night with RS. So JYL and I got ready for Tao since JYL’s friends, CZ and two others, had just arrived. Since we had talked to the promoter, we were able to bypass almost the entire line and got in for free (the ladies anyway). Once inside, CZ proceeded to get us all a round of drinks. I think I ended up making Patron the unofficial drink of the night because starting that night, the only shot I would take would be a shot of Patron. Later on through the night, three more of CZ’s friends arrived, however, one felt sick so she and her friend were told that they had to leave but could come back tomorrow for free. Two had ended up going elsewhere so there were four of us left: CZ, JYL, NZ (CZ’s friend), and I. We were just dancing and having a good time. It was crowded, sure, but I was too buzzed at that point to care. Plus, it helped that they were playing some pretty good music (minus that half hour of complete oldies). I think I was also just excited for a dance floor considering how Thursday night went that made me feel a little more excited.

After that, we couldn’t figure out what else to do so JYL and I went back to the hotel to pass out.

Now, I must end this particular post here since I do have other things to take care of. The updating continues!