I am not okay. 

Sometimes I pretend like things are fine. I just write about things that are happy or enjoyable in my life. And when I'm not writing very much, you can be sure that it's because I'm not finding many things happy or enjoyable. 

Since coming back from Korea, I have been having more and more difficulty getting through life. I am anxious to a greater degree, and on top of that, I now have near-crippling depression, hyperventilating panic attacks (my panic attacks before never involved a lot of hyperventilation, so this is new), and possibly worst of all...I am disassociated with my own body. I don't register my physical self anymore. This is very disconcerting, and hard to explain for anyone who has never experienced it. I can't tell anymore when I am hungry or full, my body seems like a separate entity so my reaction time is diminished, and I feel like I can't...feel. 

I am having trouble completing everyday tasks, and I am sad a lot. More than 60% of the time, I am very very sad. 

There is one thing keeping me going, and that is video games. I love stories. I love them. Any and every story-telling medium is an act of beautiful creation. I love books, films, theater, television. But most of all, I love video games. They combine visual story-telling, with written story-telling, with an interactive component that you can't find anywhere else. They are truly unique, and truly limitless. 

I want to make them.

Memorial Day 2013

Raining like clockwork. 

I am addicted to Imagine Dragon's "Radioactive". I listen to it whilst playing Mass Effect 3, and it makes me feel like a badass. I love my Commander Shepard. She is a hardcore bitch. Garrus also loves her. Just sayin. 

I saw someone get the Paragon and Renegade symbols tattooed on their shoulders and I was like...oh hell yes. 

"I have plans for us to become best friends".

 Me too, Lillian. 

<3

Reconnecting

I am reconnecting with people. 

The process is arduous. And not simple. 

How do you begin a new relationship with an old friend? 

My friendship with Ian is being rekindled slowly. 

He was the Syaoran to my Sakura in middle school. We had such a cute crush on each other. 

I remember he transferred to my school from New Zealand in 7th grade, and we instantly connected over our love of fantasy and the fact that we had almost all of our classes together. We were almost inseparable for that year, and remained close through 8th and 9th grade. 

We each liked different people during those times, yet our mutual crush on each other remained, hidden away in the background. 

Now he is graduating from Oregon State with a degree in Engineering, and thinking of Med School. 

It's interesting to see what has become of him. We are no longer the people we were. But back then, we were cute.

I have a coworker named Lillian. She has such a beautiful heart, full of love, life, kindness, and generosity. 

She is a person I want to be like, and a person I want to be close to.

I think of her, and I feel better about the world. 

I would like to say to her: "I am counting the days you have added to my life".

My mother bought me Mass Effect 3 yesterday, and yesterday I also finished Mass Effect 2. I have very mixed feelings about the game. On the one hand, I felt very easily connected to all of my party members. BioWare does a consistently great job creating characters to whom you are instantly drawn, and each character is so unique and wonderful, it adds a great deal to the entire experience. 

However, I found the game entirely too short. I completed as many side missions as I could find, but the majority of the game seemed devoted to the loyalty missions, and then the three "core" missions, and that fell flat. There also was a lack of party dialogue. In the Dragon Age series, I've always felt that there was enough party dialogue to keep me happy, and to make me feel like I really knew my companions. But in Mass Effect, I was only able to have one or two conversations to get to know my teammates, and the romance was pathetic (I chose to romance Garrus). I got so tired of waiting for each level of the Normandy to load just to end up hearing "I'm busy, can we talk later?" 

Overall, BioWare is still a company I admire a great deal, and I will finish out the series. It just isn't my favorite, and I'm surprised that ME2 got as much praise as it did. 

I need to finish reading The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents today. I also bought Dan Brown's new book (Inferno), and I am reading more Terry Pratchett for fun.