It's been a really tough winter and beginning of 2007. I've been writing about most of it in locked entries because a lot of it I just don't feel like discussing with everyone. I fell into a huge post-grad slump where I missed Columbia desperately and wanted more than anything to go back to that simpler time. I felt hugely dissatisfied and totally caged in by both my work life and my social life. I didn't leave my apartment for most of January through March, usually claiming that it was because of the bitterly cold weather, but more often than not, I just didn't want to talk to or see anyone. I turned down invitations to go out one after one because I just couldn't handle seeing happy people. It sounds awful, but I was in such a self-pitying state of mind that, while I was glad to hear about my friends' successes at work or new relationships, it always triggered a "why not me" reflex that I desperately wanted to avoid.

But then the cliche of March "going in like a lion and coming out like a lamb" really did happen to me, for the first time in my life. What started as a continuation of the worst month by far that I had experienced post-college (February SUCKED, and that's all I really feel like saying for now) ended with a kind of rebirth -- a rebirth of my career aspirations, my social life, and my generally good demeanor and satisfaction with life as it is. I took a new job in the department where I used to intern at MTV, which I absolutely love so far, and I have a pretty solid understanding of how I want my career to progress, from growth within the department to grad school to what I eventually want to focus on.

As for personal matters -- nothing's really changed, nothing major has happened, but I think my more positive outlook on my work experience is rubbing off on everything else. It makes sense, because as someone who gets very personally involved in her job, if things aren't going well in that area I'll tend to be down about the rest of my life. I've been told that that's not a good way to operate, that I should learn to leave my work at the office, but I don't necessarily want "who I am" and "what I do" to be mutually exclusive. And I saw that happening for a while, and it scared me -- enough to want to make a change, and to follow through on it. For a while I didn't feel any passion for what I was doing during three-fourths of my time, and at the end of the day I just couldn't handle that. At the end of the day, I had to do what was best for me.

I have more stories, about Indian matrimonial websites and my parents' outlook on dating suddenly making a total 180 and fiascos with trying to edit Muse's thesis presentation in my spare time and all of my friends suddenly deciding to leave the city -- but that's too many words for one post. So I'll be back, in a lot less than four months -- but right now, the delightful weather and lunch beckon. May flowers, here I come.

Today was an 8 hour struggle to keep my eyes open. When I got home I opened my microwave to warm up dinner and I discovered the pint of strawberry sorbet that I stuck in there to thaw two nights ago. I fell asleep while watching Alton Brown make pad thai and woke up just as the 7:30 episode of Seinfeld (reruns of which are the only things I look forward to on weekday evenings) was ending.

Lately I just feel like a walking disaster. This weekend was incredibly fun and cathartic (a strange combination) but apparently drained me to my very core. It's almost as if you can pull a thread and I'll unravel before your very eyes.

Why does everyone except me seem to be dating someone at the moment?

My mom called me at 8AM to tell me that my grandfather passed away in his sleep last night. It didn't really hit me until I got home from work today, and checked my mail in Lerner for the first time in a month, and saw a birthday card that my grandparents had sent me about a week ago. Now I'm supposed to go to a dinner at Lucky Cheng's for my birthday. I can't very well back out on my own party but I can't help but wish my parents had waited to tell me until tomorrow, so I could have celebrated wholeheartedly instead of thinking about what I've just lost.

I'm just too exhausted to deal with anything right now. I had two back-to-back interviews yesterday (about which, as always, I'm pessimistic) and I have apartment brokers calling me at all odd hours of the day. A month from now I'll probably be laughing at all of this and wondering what I was driving myself crazy about, but at the moment I'm BEYOND stressed out and I wish college had never ended.

I am so fucking fed up with everything.

April showers better goddamn well bring May flowers, that's all I have to say.

I love filmmaking. I honest to God am completely enamored with it. I love writing, I love shooting, I love editing. I love reading scripts. I love putting together the visuals and the sound. I love the idea of location shooting. I even love production, and the business aspect of it.

But I'm scared that I'm going to become one of those women too wrapped up in her work to have time for more personal things. Like romance, and marriage, and settling down. And children. And becoming more than just her career.

I've been feeling like a sham lately. I've been feeling like I'm too uninteresting to create. Too boring to waste time with. A mere shadow of who I really could be.

Not being able to write tonight scared me. I don't think I can top my first short, and I feel like anything I write now is going to be a disappointment to me. I don't have that same burst of inspiration that came a month ago, when I saw Hema in my head running across the Great Lawn all decked out in her wedding sari, and developed the script in the last ten minutes of class. That didn't happen this time. I have the story, but the passion isn't coming out.

Passion. That's what's missing from my life recently. Pure, unadulterated passion.

I should go to bed. But I'm too wired on caffeine, and too soaked in worry. When I have nothing else to do I start panicking about who I'm going to be 10 years from now. And my biggest fear is that I'm going to be surrounded by people, but alone. With no one to really, truly open up to.

All I want is someone's arm around me, and a shoulder to rest my head on, and the ability to just sit and exist for a little bit. The comfort of having someone there who understands. To not feel like a placeholder, or a makeshift girlfriend, or someone who'll "do for now" every once in a while. And I want to care about someone in more than an infatuated way. I want the excitement that comes with love. The tingly feeling that never goes away. The 24 hour giddiness of knowing that someone else cares just as much as you do.

I just don't have the energy for any of it right now, and am beginning to wonder if I'll ever have the energy for it again.

They say things happen when you least expect them to. I have too many expectations. And no one around with which to fulfill them.

I don't understand why ALL the other women I've ever met and/or befriended in my life have to be so beautiful, smart and all-around amazing.

This sucks. I'm jealous of you all. I wish I could be more like every single one of you.

So it doesn't help that on the first night of school my throat hurts and I can't stop sneezing and I feel like shit.

And maybe it's not that great that my mom doesn't want me to take Hindi because she thinks it's "too traditional," just like the idea of me piercing my nose (i.e., "I didn't send you to Columbia just so you could work in Bollywood"...my dad took French and German in college and when does he ever use those? She should be happy I'm learning the tounge of the motherland because i goddamn well want to...).

And I guess it sucks that the company I want to work for more than anything in the world right now isn't giving me the time of day.

I came into this year thinking that it was going to be the best year ever. And my room looks so fucking cute and just basing things on that, I'd say everything's getting off to a pretty decent start. But tonight I got the inexplicable feeling that things are steadily going downhill for me.

What if I never find a job? What if I never get married or have kids or even find love (the kind that lasts forever, not just the kind where the sex starts out good and you're completely taken with each other for a while, but after a little bit things steadily start to get worse)? What if I never make my life worth anything? What if my parents have been right all along in trying to persuade me that the things I love have no future in them whatsoever?

I'm not upset because I don't have a guy -- in fact, that's the last thing I need cluttering up my life at the moment. Men hitting on me all over the place is fine right now. But I can't stand the thought of spending my whole life alone, living off of my parents, and unable to do anything that I so want to now. I'm terrified that I don't have the potential to do what I really want to. And the worst part is I feel like I owe it to my parents to make something of myself in return for all that they've given me. I love that we've bonded so much now, but it's pretty hard to ignore them when you've come to respect them and their opinions so much.

And what if MY opinions of everything are completely wrong? I thought Sloan and I were so perfect together, but looking back on it, it was one of the weirdest match-ups I could ever think of (which, incidentally, was my initial reaction to the idea of us getting together in the first place). What if I don't have the ability to tell who'd right for me?

What if, underneath it all, I'm just a fuck-up?

I wish it were still my first year. Things seemed so much easier back then. I had great grades, a boyfriend, and no sense of obligation to my parents whatsoever.

This whole maturity and having a sense of responsibility thing really bites. If I had my way, I'd stay a kid forever.

i feel so goddamn ugly right now.

why is it that when things are starting to go well in terms of emotion for me, i go to the bathroom and look in the mirror and want to tear my hair out of my head and smash the glass in and get plastic surgery on a million different parts of my body so i can finally be satisfied with how i look??

i wish that my hair would defrizz and my skin would clear up and i could magically lose 10 pounds overnight and that my clothes would hang better on me and that i could look like the twenty-five hundred other gorgeous girls on this campus and that i could finally feel worthy of my boyfriend for a change. for once i would like to believe him not only when he tells me that he thinks i'm beautiful, because i do, but i want that certainty to linger when he's not around to reassure me. i want to so fucking badly but something inside me won't let me and that makes me so horrifically upset, because it used to be that i thought everything would be ok once i had the comfort and security of knowing that someone truly loves me for who i am.

but now i have that, and it's probably the most important thing in the world to me, and yet i still can't get myself to not give a shit about my physical appearance...and it makes me wonder what kind of person i am. i feel so selfish and so inconsiderate and like such a bitch when i think about things like this, because i know they shouldn't really matter at all. but i can't help feeling so intimidated by my friends and acquaintances, who get offered movie deals in india, who get asked to model, who have about 200 "admirers" seeking their attention at all times, who always seem to have perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect features, even when they've just woken up or are incredibly ill, who always seem to look so great in everything that they wear, who get stared at on the street. they embody all aspects of physical perfection to me. and they constantly remind me of what i don't have.

i have a headache. i hate losing at solitaire. and i need to sleep. i guess this body image crisis is all part of being a girl. i don't know.

i AM man repellent. don't believe anyone when they say i'm not.

i freaked out last night. i mean, literally, freaked out last night. jess came in here and i was sobbing my eyes out.

i'm having superficiality issues again. just when i thought i was done with that, when i thought i was going to lay off complaining about myself and my (lack of) a love life. i guess with a bunch of people talking about guys and how they have either found new ones or are close to hitting the mark with their respective love interests, i feel really inferior because my life's not like that. i don't have the beauty or the body to attract guys, let alone get them interested enough to talk to me. i don't have someone who i can say is interested. i'm the person that no one realizes is there.

i think i need to work some things out within myself before i can start looking for new guys. because unless i come to terms with the fact that i'm not what anyone wants, i'm just going to be miserable.

i've been feeling way too stressed out over the past month, and it's not good. it's not even about school ~ that's pretty much a non-issue and i kicked arse on my midterms so far, so i'm definitely not worried about academia. it's more like what happened last year, where all of my emotions would build up and then all of a sudden i'd break down and cry for no apparent reason. and then the other half of the time i'm perfectly fine, happy, cheerful, bubbly...the roopa that everyone knows and loves. i had a breakdown last week, and then jess and lianna barged into my room, and they were more than taken aback to see me with tears streaming down my face when i had been laughing 10 minutes before. i don't know what happens to me ~ it's like i have no control over my emotions and what happens when. i mood swing WAY too much. everyone's noticed it ~ my friends, my family, my dormmates, everyone.

right now i'm still at a point where i'm completely unsure of what i'm going to feel next. i don't know whether something's going to make me happy, sad, ecstatic, depressed, whatever ~ i don't know what's coming or, for that matter, when it will come. i don't feel like i can come out and tell everyone "hey, guess what, i'm an emotional FREAK who needs major sympathy here!" because i feel so fucking selfish when i do. i'm the person that everyone comes to talk to, not the person that everyone listens to. and i'm actually pretty satisfied with that. they less everyone knows about me the better. i've had way too many bad experiences revealing myself to people, so i'd rather just be the person everyone thinks they know but later realize that they don't. it's easier that way.

i want to start writing again. not just in my diary, but for real writing. deep, complex, creative writing. i have so many ideas churning around in my head but it seems like for the past god knows how long i haven't been able to let them out. i can't figure out how. and what's worse is that i judge everything before i actually write it, which is the #1 DON'T of any creative writing. i can't help doing it; and that's why i'm struggling so much with putting words on paper. i know that writing would help me feel so much better, but i haven't been able to push myself to not care what i write or write about. i can't, not until i think it's perfect.

but over the past week i've been listening to weezer nonstop and it really has made me feel so much better, almost given me inspiration to start writing again. it seems almost like rivers' life parallels mine; in the music he has the same sort of ups and downs as me; the same personality, self-confidence and emotion issues. (apparently his birthday's the day before mine; maybe it's a gemini thing.) i've discovered that i connect with weezer so much more than with any other band i've ever listened to. in a way, they're the perfect band for me right now ~ they've got the low-key, almost dorky persona, but the music is so full of emotion and varies so much, and it's like they're still in the process of finding out what kind of band they are. kind of like how i am with my life.

it seems like i'm surrounded by couples again, just when i thought that that phase of my life was all over. hot engineer boy is dating this cute blonde girl from barnard, jess and vik - both my good friends - ended up getting together last week, wayne is in love with lianna (not that anything is going to happen there, but still, it would be fun to be worshipped, i think), mere has her french pastry chef boyfriend, musetta has three - count 'em, THREE - guys obsessed with her, and countless others have girl/boyfriends back at home.

and me? well, little old me, who thought that college would be her big chance to escape coupledom, or at least try it out for herself, is stuck all alone again.

maybe i'm just being pessimistic, but there has got to be something wrong with me. guys don't see me as a girlfriend. guys simply aren't attracted to me. and, consequently, when i see all my friends either pairing up or already in happy relationships, i feel even worse about myself. people keep telling me that the right guy will come around eventually, but i seriously doubt it.

what the fuck is wrong with me? i can't pinpoint any one thing without it leading to a barrage of others that stem from it. i start out with my physical unattractiveness, and pretty soon it careens all the way to "i'm too wishy-washy," "i need to lose 25 pounds," "maybe i offend people without realizing it," "i'm have too masculine a personality for guys to like me," "maybe they all think i don't swing that way...!?!"

i've had many, many long conversations with jess about this, and each time she says that i'll find the right guy, it's just that guys aren't used to seeing me as anything but a friend. something will happen, slowly but surely, i just have to be patient.

easy for her to say. she's GORGEOUS.

and in addition to vik, apparently slater was obsessed with her too, but when he found out that she was interested in vik, he hooked up with some 26-year-old. i say he was rebounding, jess says he wasn't, but i think my interpretation of things was the right one.

i hate being on the other side. i know that once i am in a relationship, i'll most likely want to be single again, but right now i'm just not feeling the "grass-is-always-greener-on-the-other-side" deal. i hate seeing everyone together and in love and happy and feeling left out. i hate hearing all my friends gush about how wonderful their guy/girl of the moment is. sometimes i hate being the stereotypical "friend girl" who guys come to to TALK about their girl problems. i hate being the third wheel. more than anything else, i HATE being the third wheel. i hate feeling like i'm intruding on a couple's sex time.

pretty much, i hate being alone.

ahhh...it's so nice to slack off. i should be doing some physics homework right about now, but i really don't feel like it, and it's much nicer to be sitting here in my pajamas knowing that i don't have anything else to do tonight. sgorr sucks, for reasons that my buddies in core know, and i'm consequently boycotting mj's office until senior party...speaking of which, i have validations to write too. i want to go to college NOW. i'm not even kidding. i want to go now. it sucks so much knowing that there's only two weeks left and there's really no point in even being at school anymore (except for ap exams, which some teachers haven't even started reviewing for yet).

i feel awful...not sick awful, more like a bruised ego, self-concept, whatever. i feel so not adequate right now and i can't get rid of the vibe. i don't feel like i've risen to anyone's expectations of me in the past month, much less the expectations i have for myself. i hate looking in the mirror. when i can't see properly, i think, hey, i don't look that bad, and then as soon as i put in my glasses or contacts i'm like, eeww, you look disgusting. it's so pathetic that i need encouragement from friends about my looks, especially when i don't give a shit about what people have to say about anything else, but it's true. ...i wish i had someone who cares.