Few months back I forwarded a personality test (that I still think it’s pretty accurate) to someone I barely knew.

For the first time, I attempted to get to know a person through sets of questionnaire and data interpretation. And when something turned out not as expected, I thought to myself, “is it you or just your personality?”

That was such a whimsical move (now I can laugh about).

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I’ve never been a fan of labels – it irks me to see people attach labels to arbitrary personality traits.

“Are you an introvert or extrovert?” “He’s the type of person that…”

To me, the measure of character is through idiosyncrasies, pet-peeves, the guilty pleasures they fail to quit, the drunk texts they send on a Saturday night and completely forget the next morning, the way they use flirty sarcasm in defense of a sense of insecurity, etc.

These are not the most glamorous moments of a person, yet the most peculiar and little details that sketch a much more concrete idea than the damn analysis.

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I’m not dismissing horoscope or all the personality tests as not legitimate.

Ironically, I’ve always considered myself a typical Capricorn, or a solid ENFP.

We are bought into these zodiac interpretation and survey analysis because they sketch an idea of a person and shed light on the good side of them. They allow us to fantasize a romantic clash of serendipity.

We are so obsessed with these rigid models of personality as if the whole world could be reduced to a set of multiple choice questions, and the answer was A.

However, as much as one can predominantly lean towards being a “something,” so much of human behaviors are unparalleled and unpredictable.

To me, getting to know a person is the process of accessing an authentic part of the self, with both parties being openly ready. Just as how I want to learn about people story by story, I want to be understood not by a word, but through words.

Extroversion and introversion, or any type of the sixteen personalities, isn’t an either/or type of thing. It’s a spectrum where you can lie anywhere along the line. It’s the concoction in which you can mix whatever ingredients or elements.

That isn’t to say all connections are a matter of work, but they’re definitely not forced. Not wedging into an old story. Not constantly checking to see if they measure up to expectations. Because things fit naturally.

With this mindset, I’ve come to spend less time making excruciating small talks and more time nurturing friendships with people worth investing in, whom I care for, and who I know reciprocate my love and support.

 

I will always try to preserve my free spirits, because without it, I will have no words to write, no love to give, and a much less thorough idea of who I am.

And you don’t have to lose any part of yourself, because all characteristics are meant to coexist to form your unique self.

You can be responsible yet spontaneous,

diligent yet creative,

pragmatic yet hopeful.

 

You’re the collection of all of you, including your personality.

 

 

 

Stay gold,

Yolie

 

There’s something therapeutic about train rides.

The constantly onward progression offers restless panorama moving backward. With the passing of view, I’m able to reminisce about the elapsing of time, on its own steady pace.

I once was a girl filled with wanderlust. This girl, this past me, would boldly trek through valleys of euphoria and trudge up mountains of sorrow, is but an old acquaintance.

Four years ago, I arrived on the American soil, with no expectation of what reality would throw my life into.

I took in, and took in so much, to the extent where the spectrum of color was muddled, and the delicate boundary between toxicity and substantiality was blurred.

Four years later, I found myself on the island of the Great Britain, washed by the Atlantic Ocean in the North, yet differently, with concise values of education, lifestyle, and sociality.

I recognized things in colors. I was able to evaluate what I encountered from the perspective of what I had experienced.

Today, I sit in a room filled with emptiness, exhaustion, and eeriness. Yet I’m tired of once again attempting to build a rapport with a whole new world, expending emotional labor, luxuriously and incessantly.

 

2016 was such a year of trying. 

Trying to search, connect, and accept.   

And more specially, it was the year of me as a 21, being a 21.

To me, 21 is a noble number, as it takes away the excuse of baby-ing and grants the title of adult-ing. Though the society seems to assume a 21 with ever-widened knowledge of knowing how to adult, I, at heart, did not come to realization of certain things until I let myself.

Yes, 1. the most worthwhile moments are the ones that I let myself.

Yet, I’ve been too down to keep letting myself.

And you can’t really un-feel a sensation, or un-know something like heartbreak.

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I had been loved, and I had loved.

I craved for intimacy.

I expected bilateral conversations day in, day out.

I verbalized my loving feelings.

I took initiative to make things happen.

 

Basically, I had zero chill.

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But now, I have way too much chill.

The same innocence and vulnerability that allowed me to love so hard have also doubled in intensity as lie, rejection, and loss entered my life.

I don’t want those feelings.

So I’ve built walls.

I’ve become suspicious of possibilities, and turned down opportunities.

My inability to feel let me down a rabbit hole. I’ve dug into the artifacts of my past relationships with families and friends.

As naïve as it seems, teenage impulse and young love’s purity is a fucking force of nature. The same way they generate conflicts and clashes, an unbroken heart is able to rebound and recover from the custom lessons of growing up, and is able to live and love without the burdensome knowledge of the darker side.

 

I’ve come to a realization that 2. friendships and relationships are built on needs. The relations are maintained because two parties feel valued. Imagine if you never have a reason to need them. It is when we humble ourselves to the fact that interdependency is essential that we uncover a true relationship. It’s okay to reach out.

3. If you believe that tears are the vibrant signs of vulnerability, think again. Being vulnerable means being honest with yourself, expressive of feelings, and open to who you trust. Tears are not vocal.

4. There’s no games of better and worse. It’s simply a matter of is or is no longer. If you don’t matter to certain people. It’s not about you. It’s simply the fact of irrelevancy. There are just some people you don’t click.

5. Take pride in your passion. It’s your identity. It’s what gives you comfort, and makes you you.

6. Spend time with fam. While your social circles expand as you grow older, you are still the world to your parents, who go through life with your best interests in mind. Learn to care about them the same way they do for you.

7. A period of sobriety helps you realize things. It is a period of rediscovering self-worth and balancing life options. You might realize people who you usually drunk call don’t hit you up with a sober reason either. As cliché as it sounds, to build a meaningful relationship, start with the one with yourself.

8. Traveling is fun, but there ain’t no place like home. The place you can be ugly in peace.

9. Little things ain’t little. The texts you send. The one more question you answer. The people you speak to. The kindness you spread to people. It all counts. And it all stacks up.

10. Yet, little things don’t always matter. “Don’t worry about the little things. Don’t spend energy on drama that you won’t care about in a year or two. Letting it bother you is already half the battle lost.”

11. Never underestimate a good education. Likewise, don’t take diversity and gender equality for granted. We live in a California bubble. And it is what we’ve done to get us where we are. Educate yourself. Stop saying things like “that’s so gay,” elevate your diction, question things.

12. One day you will look back, and know why it all had to happen. Not the best 12 lessons, but they are the ones I learned from the moments I let myself. Open to new possibilities, you might learn a thing or two.

 

Love,

A work in progress

 

 

I have a natural habit of rounding up reflections. Just because of something that I’ve experienced, reluctantly compromised to, and eventually embraced.

Feelings are luxuries. Human emotions are given at the cost of others and consumed by the pain of ourselves, or happiness, with luck.

As much as it sounds like I’m an extreme pessimist, I’m a firm believer in feelings, in soul mates, and in wearing heart on sleeves and following where it leads.

While I collect my past from romantic overindulgence, barren apathy, to destructive resentment, my sensitivity to feel and my capacity to reflect tend to go up as my emotions go down.

This has made me believe that feelings are organic, unstable, and impermanent. They are luxuries because they are fleeting.

Yet through the humility of holding onto something tighter than holding onto myself, I’ve become aware that there’s no better way to catch and relive my feelings than by writing down in words.

Out of my collection of feelings, I’ve experienced an abundance of new ones these past months. To be exact, they weren’t the ones that I could pleasantly take in and store them into the memory story. They were enigmatic, and sometimes helpless. They often compelled me to confront, and deal with them.

This enigma was seasoned with spice and sugar, the two that produced completely opposite flavors, yet gave me two of the most meaningful lessons in life.

 

Spice.

At the beginning of my sophomore year of college, I let myself possess by someone who saw me as a possession.

He had an athletic body and the most genuine smile. But what he gave me was more than just eye candy.

With witty humor, intuitive insight, and exceptional social skills, he surpassed me not only by years in maturity, but also in sophistication.

I guess that was also what got him so much attention, and made him a player who was careless, nonchalant, and had commitment issues when it came down to relationship.

When I came to identify the ways that he treated me as varied forms of disrespect and out of apathy, I still held on. I made the minimal good outweigh the vast amount of bad.

From a mutual connection morphed into a unilateral attachment, he showed me where the demons live. He brought out all the negativity in my body that I’m capable of.

But we were never together. In the competition between us, he won for caring less. But soon I realize there was no such thing as competition. The trophies-for-everyone rule doesn’t work for adulthood. There is no “if we want something, we get it.”

I’ve learned that sometimes, feelings are unreliable. They don’t guarantee a payback. Yet too often in life I bank too much on feelings, and expect the rest to come easy. It’s not enough.

Just as a tree grows from a seed, it must be supplemented with affection, dedication, transparency, trust, day in and day out dynamics of communication. They’re practices bringing out of feelings.

 

Sugar.

This year, I became closer to someone who embodied the ideas of caring, selflessness and persistence, which was a combination of a blessing and a curse.

It was a blessing because it was the kind of love I needed the most in the midst of the college fun and games. It was also a curse because I was blindfolded with my peter pan syndromes.

Women who came of age during Y2K were spoon-fed a solid version of what it means to be in love. Part of me still hung up to the value of ideal impression, common ground, and maybe the zsa zsa zsu -or butterflies.

For the first time in a very long time, I attempted to design a relationship top-down: “I don’t like this jacket in the photo.” “Why don’t you smile with teeth?”

That was such a fallacy. I was digging for love in a person, instead of a person I could love. So when something was perceived less than ideal, I dismissed the possibility as the “right” fit.

To him, I was never ready. To me, I came to realize that I also had commitment issues, which later identified as a go-to excuse for incompatibility. It was lack of chemistry, and the feeling of completeness.

He brought me back to the realistic basis of a relationship: pet peeves, imperfection, and dissatisfaction. When the flaws started to outshine the personality, and the criticism gradually dominated my psychological self, all I had left for him was appreciation, instead of affection.

I never said yes, and I have no regret in my decision. It’s not completely a loss, because I’ve learned that feelings cannot be forced to reciprocate, from a receiver perspective, which gives me a bigger picture in understanding it as a giver, for that matter.

 

The Luxury to Feel

Three is always the largest number in literature, as it encompasses the world, the one in store of all you need to understand all you have.

After all, this seasoned enigma is never tangible.

It’s a puzzle with bare bones and broken pieces that I put together with time and reflection. It’s a riddle with busted emotions and bad decision that I try to get something out of. And I did.

I’ve come to realize, to truly embrace feelings, you have to let yourself feel, while practicing your ability to choose, not blindly, impulsively, or emotionally.

And there’ll be a time, you’ll feel it, for what it really is.