another helping Please

Hey, I'm Christina. 基督徒 - disciple of Christ

[anotherhelpingpplease]

What’s the next thing that’s going to deter this?... How long do we have until this turns into an awful mess?

It doesn’t mean that it’s not special and extraordinary just to have a relationship that’s fragile and somehow meaningful in its fragility.

She captures really well the most overwhelming feeling I have towards almost everything. Anxiety about friendships and people leaving, about career, about feeling happy, about life etc. The prevalent thought is that these things can't last. The prevalent question is always "What's the next thing that I will run into that will make everything difficult".

(She’s gotten so much better at singing, even from the release of 1989)

[anotherhelpingpplease]

This is most definitely not what was intended by the song but

Every time I hear “Can’t Feel My Face” (by The Weeknd) I think of all the times it was so cold I literally couldn’t feel my face in Pittsburgh. And it makes me think of all the people and loving the time with these people. And yeah, it (kind of) didn’t matter that my face was numb and I couldn’t feel any of my limbs...

[anotherhelpingpplease]

[anotherhelpingpplease]

The room smelled like the hot summer air. It lingered until mid-September. I would be able to smell hints of it in the winter because the heater was always on full blast. We were both really lost and I barely saw you. It was around the time I made apple crumble and you thought I messed up. But you ate it anyway. I walked to the edge of nowhere and back, multiple times. You dealt in other ways. This is the semester that doesn't exist in my memory. I always revisit this hazy memory and all its emptiness. I don't know if this pain is purely masochistic or truly nostalgic.

[anotherhelpingpplease]

The Summer That Never Was

In middle age, the last days of August bring not just melancholy, but a sense of desolation, as of a possibility lost forever.

It’s only a superficial throb of a pain that goes much deeper, in the same way that those few oddly cool days in August are the first innocuous evidence of an entire planet tilting inexorably into the shadow. It’s entangled, somewhere down there, with the existential panic of aging. Of time passing, the calendar running out, things left undone.

And [at the end of my life] I’ll probably still be evading the same truth I’m evading now: that the life I ended up with, much as I complain about it, was pretty much the one I chose. And my dissatisfactions with it are really with my own character, with my hesitation and timidity.

God, how I long to go out West again someday — to drive some blue highway in Nevada or Utah until there’s absolutely nothing around me, then stop the car, in the middle of the road, maybe, and get out and just stand there, where I can see the horizon in every direction, and smell the air and feel the sun and listen to the silence of the desert. I have this idea that if I could do this, time might hold still for a second, and I would know, for just a moment, what it feels like to be here.

I’ve had a struggle where I think that “If only I could go ____ by myself and just leave everything behind for a week or two” then maybe I can move on. And I’ve resented all the choices that lead me away from that - work, family, people. But In the end, these choices I made, I made them. and I have to be able to live with the choices I made. So I’m learning to live with them and learning about living.

[anotherhelpingpplease]

After trimming the lemon tree, there aren't as many lemons. But trimming the tree is actually the right thing to do. It's like what Jesus does to us. When we aren't growing then Jesus trims us so that we grow better.

Mom to Calvin

[anotherhelpingpplease]

A I love you never going to let you Be alone now always going to help you See you are the only one I want to love

I am afraid of being let go, by anyone. I am afraid people will leave if they have no use for me anymore. This was an important realization.

[anotherhelpingpplease]

I like driving fast. Sometimes it's that I enjoy getting to my destination in good time. A lot of times it's the speed I enjoy. The feeling of passing over the roads and hearing the car work. My own "lost" state safe within the confines of the car, matched by the rhythym of the car. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know if I'll make it to tomorrow. But something about driving soothes my soul, allowing me to think yet also forget, giving me focus and allowing me to relax at the same time.

[anotherhelpingpplease]

You took me walking through the town Showed me the statues underground Said just don't they look in peace Sometimes I wish that was me

[anotherhelpingpplease]

最后的告別是出奇的平凡。 四年以來·認識的這些人， 一起分享這充滿不確定性又充滿歡樂的短暫時光， 是要怎樣說最後的goodbye。

可是一天一天的 在教室外面，公寓外面，忙碌當中，白天，半夜 隨時隨刻都在說最後的告別。

也許這是件好事，有再見面的希望。 可是現在我看得到的是四年的回憶到此結束。

[kdramastuff]

[anotherhelpingpplease]

I would not mind living the kimbap life. Making kimbap for dinner everyday, living by myself.

[taiwanesefood]

[anotherhelpingpplease]

There was this one time, my student took me to her family’s restaurant. We ordered something like this and it came out piping hot. Even though it was a really hot and humid day it was still really good to eat. Sitting with Kristy in her family’s store, sharing some afternoon moments with her and Kyle - I told myself I’d remember the way so that if I was ever back in her area, I could come visit but I don’t remember the way anymore. 

[cx882]

You Hate Yourself Because We Told You To

[yesdarlingido]

Burn your ship.

I was talking with my friend’s mom tonight and after she told me she and her husband are about to celebrate their 30th anniversary, I asked her what the key to having a successful marriage is. This was her answer: 

Two pioneers in separate ships reach the same piece of land. They decide that together, they can make it on this land with each other. They don’t know what all they’ll come across since it’s new territory, but they swear to each other that they’ll take it one day at a time and face it side-by side, so they burn their ships and they burn the port. That’s how you make marriage work. You choose who you want to face it all with, and then you decide that leaving is not an option. You have to both burn your own ships. 

[anotherhelpingpplease]

wow.

[jspark3000]

The toughest thing is to see a person you love get to the edge of their resolve and quietly fall apart. It’s a slumping of the shoulders or a long hurtful sigh or a sarcastic remark or they blink away a tear. It’s different than hysterics. There’s a silent internal folding like a shot in the gut, a hollow feeling of resigned pointlessness: and it’s so deadly quiet.In that moment, they may be too embarrassed to ask for help or to expose how weak they really feel. But I hope it’s that exact moment we rush in to hold them up. I hope we fill up that crumpled collapsed space with a word of life. To remind them of their value, worth, dignity, to show the progress they have made up this mountain. I hope we don’t simply plod along when we know there’s something wrong: but we fly in there with the audacity to rebel against their resignation, as gentle as a surgeon and until our voice shakes. It won’t be pretty. Probably it’ll feel like you’re not even helping. Real love is gritty, messy, clumsy, unpolished, raw. It’s not at all romantic or like a scripted Hollywood epiphany. But our words do not need to be witty or wise or altogether right. We just need someone to fall on, to lift our heavy arms, to be close enough to feel our hot tired breath: even for one more step. We need the hope of vulnerability. And to be that for someone reminds us why we do anything at all. We remember that the fabric of life is together, a journey of side-by-side, so that even a failure is not the end of anything, but only a deepening of you and me.

J.S. (via jspark3000)

[anotherhelpingpplease]

in a whirlwind of finding "me" and "you" and "him" and "her"