indi3punk5ta's Xanga

home & garden cover shoot

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 06:09:55 GMT

charlotte york and trey mcdougal sat in their beautiful upper east side apartment and had breakfast. A handsome doctor and a beautiful socialite, they were the perfect couple.

some relationships are only beautiful from the outside.

we're the powerhouse couple i've always dreamed of being. i used to dream of a handsome blonde marketing mananger mogul with a trendy urban fashionista. we would take over the world from coast to coast. when that dream fell through, i thought my dreams were shattered and i thought i proved miss carrie bradshaw right. she was right, perfect couples were just pictures.

then the power house engineering program manager came in. not only the managing mogul, but world class athlete. this and a now budding financial genius, taking over aerospace and retail, one latte and dreamliner at a time. these past eight months feel like a weird dream. where even simple moments like cleaning the kitchen stove here in bellevue washington, can feel like prepping for a ladies luncheon in the fabulous zip codes of new york city. where clad in nothing but a t-shirt and jeans feels like french couture and louboutin stilettos. each moment feels too good to be true, and i wake up with this fear that i'm going to wake up and realize that this whole time i've been watching fromthe outside.

is it cynicism? is it self preservation? what it isn't is taking it for granted. i'm so grateful to have met my mcdougal, to realize that sometimes, it's ok that they're not completely fucked up like big. that there are going to be guys who don't want to lead you on and break your heart for 3 years un-ending, who disappear and forget you exist after sharing the most intimate of conversations - that not every guy is out to hurt you.

i once wrote to a friend...

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:29:50 GMT

do you ever have one of those surreal moments where you can't believe where you're standing and what you're seeing?

i biked across the golden gate bridge this weekend. besides my knees feeling like they were about to give out not only from the ridiculous uphill climb to the actual damn bridge, but also from being so absolutely stunned at realizing where i was and what i was looking at. to my left i saw the endless bay of water, so perfectly meeting the sunset and feeling the warmth on the sun on my skin. i looked up and saw the towering beauty looming over me and to my right saw the san francisco skyline. "this is the good life", i thought...

i hopped back on the bike and continued the trek towards sausalito. as i went breezing across the bridge with the chilly december wind against my face, i looked over to my left and saw kieran smiling at me, passing me on the bike. "this is great, isn't it?" he asked. i couldn't think of anyway to correctly express how fully i believed in the answer "yes".

we got back last night from a weekend trip to san francisco. we stayed in a city view room on the 23rd floor on the grand hyatt located right in the middle of union square (and conveniently across the street from not only gucci, but dior and louis vuitton, god help me). we completed the san francisco checklist for every tourist: ride the cablecar, check. squeel as the cable car went flying downhill, check. squeeze my boyfriend's hand as i saw our passing reflection in the shop windows on the cable car, check. walk around fisherman's wharf double fisting ice cream cones and crepes, check. ferry boat ride to alcatraz, check. hiked up the damn alcatraz island in ridiculously inappropriate shoes (four and a half in heeled boots), check. the most amazing french meal (and most ridiculous bill i have ever picked up), check. drank myself silly off absolute gimlets and bailey's on the rocks at the top of the hotel laughing away to the san francisco skyline in the backdrop, check. ate delicious pasta at a crazy italian cafe in north beach at about 2 o'clock in the morning, check. shopped my little butt off across all of downtown san francisco, check. felt so incredibly happy, safe, and unfairly lucky asi fell asleep in kieran's arms on the plane ride home, CHECK.

although our weekend plans are going to sound complete contradictory to this statement i'm about to make, i'm going to say it anyway, we're a fairly modest and tame couple. modest and tame in the way that, he always gives me a light kiss on the cheek before we leave for work. or "i had a great weekend, thanks". nothing over the top, no overly dramatic gestures, just simple kisses and goodbyes and tokens of affection. although sometimes it worries me that perhaps he's not as heavily emotionally vested in me as i am him, it's a stable feeling. i left a bit hurriedly and quick today in the morning and he didn't kiss me as i left. 2 minutes later, my phone rings and he asks me if everything is ok. "i always give you a little kiss and you just ran right off, so i thought something was wrong." there's something so safe and comfortable in little routine gestures of that sort.

but i find myself wanting to drop the "L" word at the end of phonecalls. "ok, call me later. lo-, *ahem* yeah. talk to you soon". i catch myself at these random awkward points and i can't figure out if i want to say it because i genuinely feel that way or if it's one of those things i just feel like i should say.

people mistake us for living together. mika now calls him "my other half". when he shows up to joey's by himself or with other friends, everybody asks him where i am first before they ask him "how many in your party?". and frighteningly enough, the only thing that irked me about this was being scared that it bothered him. i like being associated with him. i like being known as a couple. dear god, what has this welsch man done to me?

he wants to go to new york together. i want to take him to hawaii for vacation. and we both want to spend summer in paris together. but at the same time, we both know that there's still so much up in the air. he could be moving back to the uk or even france at this time next year. we could potentially break up in 2 weeks. we know there's no guarantee. and i find myself constantly comforting myself that this is a good thing because in all honesty, it scares me. am i just a "fun american girl"? or am i "yuki, the complicated, sometimes tough, yet to ridiculously vulnerable, sometimes even needy, but fully supportive girlfriend?" i don't know and i'm too scared to ask.

i can't believe i just wrote that much about a boy. yes, there are more important things in life. jesus yuki.

i'm taking a stab at this taking better care of myself thing. no, yuki, three bowls of french fries don't count as eating better. yes yuki, you should go to the gym. no, no more smoking. no more binge drinking. and with these things comes the loss of appeal of things like clubbing nights, dressing up like a skank and trying to score free drinks. rather, meet me for wine and dinner or movie nights, or let's go play some pool. it feels good to not be hungover or reeking of sweat and smoke every morning.

i'm on a new quest to figure out what i want to do with this whole career thing. my friend carolyn joined microsoft as a marketing analyst a year ago and just recently joined the economist as a marketing manager. if she made that jump, so can i. so now it just buckles down to my staying focused in a position i'm not too hot about and preparing myself for movement in the very near future, whether still in this company or no. as much as i'd like to give all this up and just live my life as a freelance photographer, i know that's not possible. but nobody said i can't do it in my very limited free time. step one: create a website and learn how to sell myself. maybe i'll even have you model for my portfolio when you return.

a lot can happen in two months...

Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:00:04 GMT

my days begin either still snuggled up against the warmth of kieran's body enveloped in the soft comforter and protected by his arms or i open my eyes and greet the day to the cityscape of belltown. it's the wee hours of the morning, as sunbreak peeks into my bay windows, that i'm reminded that i really have become a working adult. no more roommates, no more yelling at my mother, no more "throw on a sweatshirt and show up to class an hour late", but rather routine, discipline and most of all, responsibility.

work has been a learning experience. i've discovered many flaws about the company previously hidden by an overly fabricated idealistic perception of this dominating monster. and i'm slowly, more and more, starting to figure out what may be more suitable for myself. consulting? finance/equity sales? i'm trying to figure it all out.

there's something strangely "nice" about having a routine. it's nice to hit the snooze button every morning at 7:30, and to step onto the MT132 at 8:17. and it's the greatest feeling in the world to know that at the end of the workday, it's going to be a lovely dinner and movie on the couch with kieran.

i've never been one for relationships. especially ones that were calm, steady, patient... in other words, normal. it was always this addiction for complication, for drama, for pain. and now, now that things are the most simplest they've ever been, they're absolutely perfect.

kieran's more than i could have asked for. older, wiser, patient, so smart, so talented, so sweet, so caring, so kind. for the first time in my life, it feels so unbelievably good to be so unbelievably vulnerable.

all my friends are getting old. we meet up for dinner still in work clothes, gossip over happy hour, and plan weekend getaways to the hottest cities all over the world.

christmas in san francisco and new york with kieran, march madness in miami, weekend rendezvous in vegas...
belltown, queen anne, green lake, bellevue, kirkland...
good wine, good food, good company...

this is definitely the good life :)

the new things in life

Sat, 29 Sep 2007 05:00:35 GMT

it's been a while, dear friends. from broken hearts, to foreign excursions, it's been a busy few months. especially when i decided to change the entire course of my planned out life to something completely different after a random phonecall/pseudo job interview.

i cancelled SF plans. i'm actually going to be living in seattle, working for the evil coffee monster, haha. but i think this is going to be better for me. despite the size of the company, my team only has five people, including myself. my manager, linda, is extremely wise, nice, and i really look up to her. she's been with the company for over fourteen years, so needless to say, the woman knows her shit.

i'm in the US retail sector which means i get the in on all the exciting things that are going on. i know all of the new drinks they're planning on releasing, all the marketing ideas, the new concepts about the starbucks card, everything! now i just have to figure out a way to make my cubicle a bit more "yuki friendly". right now it's very bland and boring. luckily, i stocked up on postcards while i was in europe, so i should be ok.

i'm moving out in a week into my dream apartment. i found a loft studio apartment right in the middle of belltown, on 2nd & blanchard (behind one of my favorite bars). it's absolutely perfect for me and i'm ready to start this more...independent part of my life. i've never lived on my own, and i'm gonna admit, it's probably going to be quite lonely. but i'm expecting more time for myself. and i think i really need that in the next few months.

i'm learning french. je m'appelle yuki :) and i love it.

fall's here. hello to socks and sweaters. i'm excited for the new things to come as all the events from summer fold over for a new chapter in my life...

i lost my ability to love

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 07:47:17 GMT

isn't it frightening sometimes to look at the way your character changes over time and the course of events that occur throughout your life?

marissa came up to me the other day and "what's happened to you? you never used to be like this.."

she's right. i used to be so active across so many aspects of my life. social butterfly, straight-A studente, so content and still curious with what life had laid down in front of me. nowadays, i'm gone working until late hours, passed out in bed from exhaustion and lack of sustenance until late afternoon hours. i'm memorizing bar drinks more than financial models, i spend more time schmoozing rich men then hanging out with my friends, and i've become slightly obsessed with my bank account numbers, overtaking any attention i used to pay to my grades.

i'm tired. i crashed so hard this weekend, from an infected ankle to just simply working too much. at 11:00 p.m. i rolled myself out of bed, binged on whatever i could find in my fridge, and spent a quiet moment thinking about the place that i'm in now. my friends have slipped from any sort of grip i used to have and i know i have nothing and no one to blame but myself and the way i set my priorities. full time load + over full time work strains relationships to such a thin stretch that they eventually evaporate into nothing. still tragically devastated from an unsuccessful love affair, i've built up these ridiculous walls around my emotions, and at any slight sign that i may begin to tear these walls down, i put the restraints down and i'm back to once again being nothing but an empty human shell.

i talked with alan today regarding relationships and how they fit into this current place in our lives. i'm leaving for europe in 2 months, moving to san francisco for a year, before hopefully spending 2 years in copenhagen doing my masters degrees. what fool on the face of this earth would put up with a regimen like that? i don't quite have a problem with being alone. i don't miss hearing the "i love you"s and i know if it's physical attention that i seek, i have my means of satiating that need. i'm not stupid enough to think into the long term arena, but it's a bit numbing to know that life is spinning so fast, almost out of control, and that all of it was created with my own two hands. nobody knows if any of these decisions i make are right and in a few months' time i could be kicking myself in the ass for it. but for now, although at moments like right now suck so badly, i know this is right. it's a growing pain and the masochist that i am, i can't admit to love how painfully drained i am each night as i fall into slumber. i like the ache of sleeping alone, and how it hurts to crave nothing more but human warmth next to me each night.

i'm sick.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 07:20:40 GMT

done.

what are you supposed to do?

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:16:00 GMT

it took just one moment, really. one sudden feeling, when something clicks and you get a feeling of inevitability. that i knew the fall was coming and that there was nothing i could do to fight it, no matter how hard i tried. i've never experienced inevitability before attraction. i never organically fell for someone strictly based on how they made me feel. this isn't to trivialize any of the feelings i've had in the past. it's just so different i don't know how to react to it. with john, philip, it started as attraction. i thought "ooh, cute guy, let's go check it out". and with my shit luck i fell for them. i fell for john because of the comfort, i fell for philip because of the intrigue. this time, i'm falling for comfort and intrigue, all as a big surprise and lack of pursuit on my part.

i ask myself, what am i doing and what am i thinking. really, just 3 days, a handful of small conversations, what do i really know about this person. am i blowing, again, this all out of proportion? did i make up that magical feeling he gave me, did he even want to talk to me? or was i so blind in my desire that i forced it all? but then i remember what it felt like to sit next to him and mumble, what it felt like to see him laugh, and the way my world stopped when he looked up from his side and right at me. i wish i could capture that moment and keep it with me forever and i am already pained thinking that i may forget what that looked like.

i know he has to become a memory. i know he has to fade to the past and be something i look back on. and is he even going to remember me? will i have any mark, even just a trace in his memory? i'm not letting myself ask the what ifs, the fucken what ifs questions that screw so badly with your head you can't even figure out which part was actually reality. at the end of the day, the what ifs mean nothing and no matter how you're fight it, all you have are the memories, and even a little bit of hope. but the problem is, what do you do with this hope? hope that maybe one day fate is on your side and you get just one more talk, one more laugh, one more moment? or do you take that hope and hope that there is someone else out there that may spark the same magical feeling.

i don't know.

third time is a charm

Sat, 17 Mar 2007 10:59:41 GMT

this is my third attempt at writing this entry. i've had thoughts upon thoughts collecting in my head throughout my time here in tokyo, but everytiime i've sat down with hopes of figuring out exactly what they are, i'm simply left with a slur of meaningless words. nothing conveys what i really hope to say and in the end, my thoughts end up just more jumbled in my head than when i first started to try writing.

i've been numb the entire time i've been in tokyo. the people here are monotonous, in their matching black trench coats and briefcases. Watching them go to work on the train in the morning, they all have the same meaningless faces, just absolutely expression less. i don't know if it's culture, but i wonder, at the end of the day, what does it take to make these people actually genuinely smile? is it their fancy little gadgets? their fancy little phones? what about the girls? what's the point in spending so much time in the morning getting ready to only end up looking the same as everybody else.

it's hard being in a place where i don't understand anything. i've never in my life been in a place so lost in translation, in every aspect and meaning. as i'm being lost in their translation, i'm starting to find trouble in deciphering my own feelings and thoughts, resulting in just a mindless state.

i'm starting to get it. maybe not completely, but at least i've found a bit more of a sense of understanding. tokyo's got its own charm. and though it my not tickle my senses the way europe calls to me, i can see the way that it calls to others. especially him. the streets in tokyo glitter with lights and sounds, and their faces are mesmerizing in a way where they don't look real. it's like pages taken out of a strange comic, their painted painted faces, with their simultaneous matching smiles. when i take in the sights and sounds, i let it just seep into every pore in my body, let it slip underneath my skin and just let myself feel it. but then i step back and i think about him. i picture him walking around the city, i picture the look on his face as he passes by the same storefronts and japanese women, and i can almost feel exactly how he fell so deep in love with this city. and the more i'm starting to understand that, the more i'm realizing how far i am from what it is that he really wants. so maybe he has always just been too nice to tell me the truth, and it's taken me these long and painful 20 months to really see how low of a place i really hold. i'm finally starting to see how much of a fool i've made of myself. it's a painful realization, it really hurts. it's such a bad pain that i almost can't feel any of it. but at the same time, this pain is allowing me to finally see an end to my misery and my longing, and it's a bit of a relief. i understand that this may not change, ever, how i feel about him. i may forever be tortured with my affair with this unrequited love, and that's just something that i'm going to have to admit and deal with. perhaps i may never meet someone that intrigues me the way he does, nobody's smile will ever dazzle, nobody's eyes will ever sparkle the way his does, i may never be as drunkenly intoxicated by anybody's scent but his. but there will be others that pass through my life, electronic djs or models, and they will manage to distract me long enough to have pauses and breaks from the pain that's tortured me for so long.

i'm a girl. i have feelings. i admit to it. i latch on my feelings to people that i may not care about. to people who i know pass through my life, or will pass through in such a foreseeable future, but i still allow myself to devote my attention to these people. and when the time comes, whether it be when i leave a city or when i meet somebody else that can hold my interest, i will allow myself to switch those feelings over and it'll be the same sick cycle all over again.

in 20 months i have yet to meet somebody like him, and in addition i may never have the experiences i had with him. strangers, strange cities, magic. i find myself hungry for that experience again, longing for that one night connection. i've even attempted at throwing myself into potentionally hazardous situations, drunkenly stumbling around tokyo bars and going home with random strangers from tennessee, but in the end, when i return home and wash the city off my face, i look at myself in the mirror and when i look at my eyes, they still have that sad slant of an angle, that same stare i've had in my face since the moment he walked away from me. the deeper slant since he shut the door in my face. that stare that reeks in every aspect of him.

tokyo's over very soon for me and i'm not sure if i'm leaving with more or less than what i started with. a one night stand with someone i could only meet in a foreign city, more free drinks than i should ever consume, and the realization of a painful truth only this city could force me to admit. fuck yeah, spring break.

revelations at 3 a.m....coherancy at 8:45

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:24:50 GMT

i randomly broke down last night and i'm not sure what acted as the appropriate catalyst for yet another meltdown of mine. i laid in bed and sobbed for a bit until the corners of my eyes felt raw and stingy, and those short choked sobs finally slowed down enough for me to take a deep breath and catch the minimal two hours of sleep before i had to wake my overlyexhausted ass self for yet another day in what has been the longest week of my life (do i win a prize for writing the longest sentence ever yet?). in the wee hours of night, wrecked by the nightmares and torture of insomnia, i found comfort and solace by emptily browsing through myspace profiles, weblogs, posted pictures, these random moments captured of other people's everyday life: people i barely know, people i once encountered, people who have become nothing but bare traces of memory in my life. there's a sort of painful realization of watching how the pages turn in other people's lives. you strike a comparison and wonder how, at one point your lives halted at a similar stopping point, and beyond that diverged to flourish so differently into what they have become today. some of us have watched relationships evolved into something so deeply rooted and engrained in our souls that a once random stranger has become as close and personal as an actual physical ligament in your body. others have watched relationships crumble through a violent downward spiral, dramatically shattering at a rock bottom point into hundreds of thousands of microscopic pieces. and some, unfortunately, have watched themselves slip in character, where as each day of the calender is ripped off with the setting of the sun, a bit more of their soul slips away into the unknown, and they're soon faced with the realization that the lives they lead are nothing more than physical movements of a now empty human shell.

i stepped back and i looked at one of my shallow profiles on the internet and i wondered what others thought of me. yuki, with her tattoos and mohawk (or now her dramtically blonde and long extensions), her pompous and cocky list of internships, her pretentious music taste and interests and overly impressive travel plans: what do people think? i've had my passport stamped more times in the last 20 months than i have my entire life. i've started a sick love affair with airport terminals and flight search engines, an obsessive addiction that has predominantly taken over any sort of plan i had ever created for myself. then i glanced around at my room and wondered what a random stranger would think if they were to make a judgment about my character based of the mess and shit hole that i am currently living in. there's my massive collection of designer high heels, all my fancy cashmere sweaters, dress trousers, and a wardrobe so scandinavian you would almost expect me to speak swedish: the stripes make your head spin and if you look long enough, you almost feel as if you've suddenly been sucked into a black and white movie. there's my photography prints on my wall, framed images of foreign cities, distorted angles of random sides of buildings and bicycles so they give off an image of pretention and some sort of faked art.

if i didn't know who the hell i was, i would think "damn, this girl's got her shit together". nobody believes my insecurity, they don't believe me when i'm miserable. for some strange reason, there's no credibility that i could actually be unhappy. so why is it that i'm so far away from the life that everybody thinks i'm leading? i know there are certain areas in my life where i have done so poorly in the recent past, where i've made every mistake in the book and now i'm faced nose to nose with reality and everyday i have to deal with the pain of everything i did wrong. i know i hurt you, and i know you feel like you have the right to proclaim to the world that i was the bitch that fucked you over. but don't you dare think that i'm not paying for it. simultaneously, i also know i have, for lack of better wording, kicked ass in other areas of life. i'm 21 with a full time job paying a high 5 figure salary secured 6 months prior to my college graduation. i've made lifelong friendships with some of the most brilliant and inspiring people anyone could ever meet in their entire life. and i know i've surpassed many of my peers i once held above me and i know have the right to stick my tongue out at them and say "bitch, look at me now".

but when in the midst of the dark insomia-filled night, when the awkwardly bright light on my phone reads 4:42, i'm suddenly devastated when faced with the fact that i have the one thing i would trade all the good things in life for: company. i'm tortured with a fear of falling asleep, having to admit that i have to spend yet another night imagining a warm presence behind me in bed. i squeeze my eyes as tight as i can and if i try hard enough, i can almost remember what he looked like that night when he fell asleep next to me in that awkwardly small bed. his platinum hair, curly at the ends at the base of his neck, and how they contrasted against the burnt orange of his sheets. the light pink in his cheeks, gently kissed by the sunlight streaming through his window. his slow, steady breathing, just a quiet murmur. i remember how his skin felt, when i just barely traced my fingertips across the bridge of his nose and against his lips so i could just feel the dewy warmth of his breath. these memories fade a bit more each day and i'm afraid what little i can feel at night will all become nothing of reality, but all just images and feelings i create in my imagination. once i lose the feelings and images, i will have absolutely nothing left of you anymore.

i'm finishing my second to last quarter of college today, and as of 11:00 a.m. tomorrow, will begin the most hectic 12 weeks of my life. 1 week in tokyo, 1 week in montreal, weekend trips to san francisco and las vegas, while financial analyzing in the day and waitressing at some fancy ass restaurant by night. 10 weeks of my last undergraduate education, then graduation, full time work for a month and jetsetting to europe for the following month. coming home and manically packing up my entire life and moving to san francisco where i will become one of the real working world. shit. i'll be damned if i have to spend the next 12 weeks writing more entries like this and i'm hoping i can find the distraction and normalcy to find more enjoyment out of these next 12 weeks and begin to actually realize how great of a reality i've created for myself.

i miss writing

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 10:39:00 GMT

i remember the endless hours i used to be able to spend typing in a little grey box even less sophisticated than the one i'm typing in right now. editing font size, changing background colors and layouts, even adding cute little pictures of cds to show you all exactly what i'm listening to and how each and every song made me feel.

sadly, over the span of four years, my number of readers have dwindled and i've found myself writing more of these thoughts simply on the pages inside my head, for nobody else to see but myself. this is less trouble, nobody can write me angry comments about how i feel about certain issues, how i'm still feeling about certain people, stupid shit that i still do for reasons that don't even make the slightest bit of sense anymore. though less trouble, my mental walls of stability are slowly starting to crumble and for the first time in my life, i successfully pushed away a (semi) relationship due to my fickle sense of being, lack of common sense and lack of self control over the actions that i sometimes condone myself in committing.

if i were to describe how i feel these days, there are no words to describe it. this isn't because i'm on an indescribable high or low, but simpley as a matter a fact that i'm numb and empty. i'm racing against time to accomplish as much as i can before starting life as a full fledged adult in the autumn. i'm forcing in trips to foreign cities, working more jobs than i can humanly handle, and digging myself into massive amounts of debt that will one day come back and kick me in the ass. but swiping that credit card, or crying in strange beds in foreign cities, getting so lost and tired - that's the only thing that prevents me from sitting down long enough to realize how little i've accomplished in the past four years and how absolutely stuck i am in life.

i'm recovering from what my be the most severe heartbreak of the last twenty one years of my life. i haven't come close to getting over it, or finding any means of a peaceful resolution with it. but rather, i'm drained of physically feeling anymore emotion about this person anymore. the sad songs don't make me cry and his pictures don't make me sad. but rather, his picture is now just another face and all those sad lyrics are just words. and although i can be completely composed and unreactive to it right now, i know somewhere down the line all of this denial is going to come back and kick me in the ass, really hard.

we lean on what's comfortable, what's easy, when things get hard. being able to talk to you again, hearing you laugh at my stupid jokes and the little things you say brings me back to the happy and even not happy moments of the last year. i remember how heart warming your laugh could be, or how impatient i would grow with each passing minute waiting for your call. and although sometimes it feels like i'm sinking back into tha hole, i know our story is over and what's begun now is a different chapter in what is our, and only our story.

i've forgotten how to feel. and i'm afraid i may soon forget how to live.