Sunday reflections

There was a blizzard on the weekend of my 30th birthday, and I realized I'd forgotten how to walk in snow.  A second snow came this past Friday, and I felt like my feet did better this time, stomping in slush, treading carefully on ice, and having to move slower.

We forget things and remember them in ways that are both surprising and predictable.  How is it that last year I found extra measures of patience for certain friends, only to grow tired of accommodating them over the summer and fighting to break emotional ties with them?  How is it that, after a rather tense and tumultuous fall, winter has calmed my fiery need for independence, making me more willing to engage again in deeper conversation with those that used to drain me?

They say feelings are not to be trusted, and yet feelings are important signifiers for where we are at points in our lives.

It's Super Bowl Sunday, and I'm listening to music by Arvo Pärt on YouTube.  It's also Chinese New Year, and black pride has never been stronger at YDS.  Our world is complicated, intertwined, and downright stressful sometimes.  I have always tried to be "all things to all people," supporting other students of color at the expense of my own Chinese identity, but this season I'm more content to hide inside my ethnicity and to try less hard to reach outside of it.

Maybe people appreciate you more when you act as you are expected.  I've never been a "typical Chinese" person who stays out of conflict and hides what she thinks.  I'm honest to a fault and not afraid to ruffle feathers.  I ruffled quite a few last semester, and I got slammed for it.

My presence on campus has decreased (and been missed, I'm told), but I'm taking care of more important things now.  I've given everything I had to the YDS Community, and now I'd like to invest more time in personal relationships that mean something to me.

This new orientation has given me more time and freedom to go out to coffee when asked.  Dinner, even, once.  And that's been nice.  It's not as much about what I do for people right now.  It's about who I am and where I came from--telling my story and asking people to listen.  And that's what I need right now =)