In other news, I go back to college in two days. YESSSSSSSSSSS.

It started out as a pretty normal Saturday. Junk food shopping in the morning with Elaina at the town’s supermarket. Essay writing in the afternoon.

Mini high school reunion in the evening. :DDD

Nothing extravagant, just dinner at a restaurant in Boston with eight friends whom I haven’t seen since graduation. The restaurant… was the most bizarre eating establishment I’ve ever been to. The servers are supposed to be the rudest, least hospitable bitchfaces you’ll ever meet. For example, if you ask for straws they’ll throw a handful in your direction. They’ll take your order by nodding at you, saying, “You. Whaddya want?” One chick took Merry’s hat off her head and wore it for the remainder of the evening. An interesting experience, to say the least.

The main feature of the restaurant is not the food, but the hats. They give every diner a paper hat resembling a giant condom with a personalized insult written on it. Sometimes it’s random, sometimes they truly pick on you. Like, Lynne’s random insult said “I braid my pit hair,” but another friend’s was truly insulting. This friend’s gender is kind of ambiguous, and so the server just wrote a question mark on her hat. She honestly didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean and I felt soooo bad that I knew exactly what it meant.

As for my hat, the server had simply written “EZ.” Uhm. I hope that was a random insult that had nothing to do with me personally.

Near the end of dinner, I received a text from Manny out of nowhere. (I got a new, non-sucky phone that can text and take pretty pictures, by the way. Except for the data plan, ’twas freeeeee <3) And I say out of nowhere because I hardly interacted with him since that day I embarrassingly ran away from the theater, and here he is with a text casually asking me what I’ve been up to when we haven’t talked in four days.

I mentioned that I happened to be in the area at that very moment, and so he tells me omg come visit!!

(His exact words, btw.)

I was actually going to ask him myself if I could visit. He just saved me the trouble.

It was pretty late when I finally got to his college, about 11:30 at night. The subway would stop running in an hour and I needed it to get back to campus, but it would have been such a shame to travel all this way only to leave moments later. Plus, it’s risky for a girl to be outside alone at this late hour. And I was lazy sleepy.

I asked Manny and Benji if it was okay with them that I spend the night. They had made the offer before, and I know Cappa slept over once. And the guys were completely cool with having me over. The only issue was where to sleep.

The thought of sleeping in the same [teeny tiny] bed as one of the boys made my prudish self blush, so I offered to sleep on the floor. But apparently chivalry isn’t completely dead, as Manny refused to let me do that and told me to stay in the top half of his bed; he’d sleep at the foot of it. Okay. I could handle this.

By 1 am, I was snug in bed and already semi-unconscious. The boys were wide awake on their computers like teens typically do. I was still awake enough that I opened my eyes when one of their female friends from a nearby school dropped in, wanting to watch a horror movie.

Next came the single decision that likely changed everything. Should I stay where I was and allow myself to fall asleep while the others watch the movie, or get up to watch and reposition myself so Manny could fit on the bed too?

Suppressing my inner lazy bum, I chose to watch the movie.

Benji and the girl, Traice, sat against the wall on Benji’s bed. While I got up to retrieve my glasses, Manny slid into his bed as if he were about to go to sleep, head on his pillow. I moved toward the foot of his bed and half-lied down, half-rested against the wall: a position that eventually caused me quite a bit of discomfort and cramping. Halfway through the film, I shifted until I was next to Manny, lying side-by-side, and he gave me his second pillow to use so I could be comfortable.

Well, it was a horror movie. I am easily startled. Throughout the film, these embarrassing and involuntary squeaks and squeals would escape from my throat every time something creepy jumped out. I would also bury my face into whatever was closest to me. In this case, it was either the wall or Manny’s shoulder.

Er, bad move? Boy expert Elaina said that some boys find it to be a turn on when girls look to them for comfort or protection. What if he misinterpreted my actions as being flirtatious?

After the movie ended and Traice left, it was three in the morning and the boys were scared out of their minds, LOL. Sure, I got startled during the movie, but I wasn’t scared at all afterward so I had to stifle my giggles at these two scaredy-cats. The guys were too frightened to get up and do anything else, so Benji flicked off the lights. Bedtime.

…with Manny and me lying just the way we were, just an inch of space between us.

We were close in proximity but clearly separated. The comforter was sorta bunched up in the area between our bodies, we weren’t touching at all, AND we were facing different directions. As spaced apart as two people on a twin bed could be. Let the sleeping begin!

Usually I would pass out immediately, but this time it took me a while to fall asleep, for a.) I was wearing a sweater and skinny jeans, not exactly the most comfy things to sleep in, b.) it was hot in the room and I always sleep with the fan on, and c.) I wasn’t used to having that extra body heat next to me. Manny has an abnormally high body temperature. -___-

I must have drifted off for a bit, though, because something woke me up 30-ish minutes later. I opened my eyes slightly to find that Manny and I had turned in our sleep so that we were facing each other.

That didn’t freak me out so much as his arm did, which was now draped around my waist.

You know how when you sleep you might hug a giant pillow or plushy or even your blanket? Mmm, I figured Manny was doing exactly that to me. I thought it was entirely an unconscious thing, an action in his sleep. I shut my eyes and did my best to ignore it.

Manny, over a course of five or ten minutes, kept shifting in bed. It really did seem like typical sleep movements (and he did warn me beforehand that he moves a lot), and so I went along with it and didn’t wiggle away. But as time went on, his movements became more… deliberate. Calculated. Each shift pulled me closer and closer to him, until I was completely pressed up against his body, his leg wedged between the two of mine. I was positioned slightly below him, my forehead at the same level as his mouth. With my face pretty much buried into his neck, I could hear every time he swallowed. It had yet to register in my mind that this meant he was very much lucid.

By this point I was beginning to think, okay, there’s a possibility the guy’s doing this on purpose. I wasn’t sure yet, even though YOU IGNORANT BIMBO OF COURSE HE’S DOING THIS ON PURPOSE.

(Actually. I did ask him much later if he was doing it on purpose, and he said that at first he honestly was hugging me in his sleep. Then he woke up, saw what he was doing, and thought, Oh, might as well see how far I can go. Cocky bastard.)

When I sleep, I always hug my arms to my chest, hands under my chin. So I knew for sure that he was doing everything deliberately only when I felt his fingers encircle my wrist and — with more force than a sleeping person could apply — pull my arm away from my body, placing my curled hand on his chest directly over his heart.

Throughout this ordeal I was trying to feign sleep — badly, haha. It was so obvious that I was awake and wondering what the hell is going on, omg.

Manny answered that question when he tilted my chin up and softly, tentatively kissed me in the dark.

Okay, so I lied in one of my previous entries. I guess my first kiss WAS kinda short, sweet, and shy. I just hadn’t quite imagined that it would happen in a boy’s bed, in his dorm, with his roommate sleeping in the same room, at 4:30 in the morning, with me all loopy on crazy pills.

The antipsychotic I’m taking prevents abnormal activity in the brain. So while it suppresses the deep sadness that makes me do freaky things, it also blocks excitement. I had just reached a major milestone in my life, a moment that young girls imagine in their heads many many many times with the boy of her dreams, but I literally was not able to feel much beyond shock. My heart continued on beating at a normal rate. Manny, on the other hand…

My hand was resting right over his heart, and so I could feel it rapidly drumming beneath my palm. Contrary to his usually overconfident self, he was nervous. Unsure of how I might react. Well, I didn’t pull away or slap him. So he kissed me again, then quietly said my name because I wasn’t responding to him, shocked as I was.

Oh yeah. One more silent reaction.

THE NERVE OF HIM TO STEAL MY FIRST KISS FROM ME. D:< Okay, I’m not angry at him at all because I had a crush on him and had been imagining scenarios like this in my head for a while, haha. But I very well should be mad! That boy knew that I was a total relationship virgin. Heck, practically all the boys on his floor knew. He did not know for sure if I wanted this, yet he took a chance anyway.

I’m glad he did. :)

Like I said, I had noooooooo idea that he liked me. He showed no signs. Or maybe I’m just slow to the nth power. Yeah, probably that. I can never ever tell when someone likes me.

So when I whispered to him, “Manny. What’s going on? Why me?” and he whispered back, “Because I like you,” it’s understandable that I would stupidly blurt out, “No you don’t!” in response.

I kept arguing with him on this until he said some things that set me at ease and made me believe him (can’t remember what; this was two months ago). Then he kissed me again, and there was no more talking for the next twenty minutes, which was when I stopped him so we could get some sleep.

And that was only Makeout Session #1.

He had to wake up for his hour-long work study at 8 am. He left for work late and came back early. I thought it was weird that he only spent half an hour at work, but he told me later that he abandoned his shift because I was there and he wanted to spend more time with me before I left.

I inwardly awww’d. ♥

I woke up when he came back. Seeing that I was awake, he took this as time to commence Makeout Sesh #2. Not that I minded. ;P This one was more, erm, intense. Like, he pulled me on top of him and then he climbed on top of me and that was when the hickey at the bottom of this post happened. -///- That’s the sweater I was wearing at the time, too.

Aside from the tentativeness of that first kiss, his actions were as confident as ever. I could tell from the sureness of his movements that he had a ton of experience with who-knows-how-many girls. AH, but I did resist whenever his hands traveled a bit further than I was comfortable with. He respected my wishes and stopped each time.

I told him to stop after, uh, twenty minutes :P because I had to leave soon and I needed time to make myself presentable. He went back to bed while I left for the restroom.

I stared into the mirror for the longest time in horrified fascination at my appearance. Who would have thought my hair was capable of defying gravity like that. But the most telltale sign of our nightly activities was the gigantic hickey on my neck, in plain sight. Thank God I brought a scarf with me or else there would be awkward questions.

The boys were awake when I returned to the room, donning my scarf even though it was an unusually warm day. The moment Benji turned his back, Manny silently went up to me and lightly tugged my scarf down to see the mark he left on me. When he sucked in his breath, that was when I knew it was as bad as it looked in the mirror.

(By the way, Manny later casually asked Benji if he had heard any… odd noises that night. Benji didn’t, but he was curious why I was wearing a scarf on such a warm day. Then he put two and two together and figured it out. Haha, to this day I still don’t know how he reacted to the news.)

Besides that little hickey check, he acted as if nothing had happened just hours earlier. Maybe it was for his roommate’s sake, maybe he was merely reacting accordingly to how I was behaving. After all, I was pretty much doing the same thing, sitting on his bed in this incredibly prissy nothing-happened-last-night pose: one leg crossed over the other with my folded hands resting on my knee. But being paranoid as I am, that didn’t occur to me until Elaina calmly explained it back at school. Instead, I worried that Manny was just messing around with me.

It’s true that I had a crush on him. It’s also true that I was well aware of his image as a huge player, a sex god of sorts. He just looked like a very sexual being. I imagined that he slept with a different girl every weekend. I had no proof of this, other than watching him bring back a huge bag of condoms from a college event and then show them off to his friends. Well, he wouldn’t NEED condoms if he wasn’t getting any bedroom action, right? It’s not something you would just happen to have.

That’s why I was completely okay with believing that Manny didn’t reciprocate my feelings. He was the typical bad boy that good girls like me are attracted to. >___<

I wondered about his true intentions every day for the next week. I consulted friends. I sent him subtle texts (well… subtle except for the time I let slip that I thought he was beautiful, lol). Does he truly like me or is he the playboy my head made him out to be? I had the opportunity to find out just a week later, when he invited me to come over again. Little did I know that his roommate would be out of town then…

[to be continued!]

Until next time,

~ Mimi :O

P.S. I intended this tale to only take two posts to tell, but it looks like it’s gonna take four. Can you blame me for wanting to remember every detail of my first relationship? I feel like this will come in handy for future romancey fics, now that I actually have experience. :Dv

I really love this look on her. :Dv

Happy 2012, journal!

So as I watched NEWS cuts of the Johnny’s Countdown, I admit I was worried. This was their first live performance as NEWS-4; how would it go? Would they sound good together? What about their group dynamics?

I had no need to worry. It was imperfect perfection in my fangirl eyes. ♥ It WAS live and so they’re bound to sound differently in the studio when that time comes (soon? please?), but it wasn’t bad at all! Although Tegoshi’s vocals still overpowered the other three’s because his control is… :P

I am not the biggest fan of “Kibou ~Yell~” and so I do wish they’d stop singing it at practically every event -__-, but I’m just happy that they sang anything at all. And I know that song means a lot to NEWS fans. They apparently also did a performance of “weeeek” that didn’t air because of stupid commercials, grrr. They sounded great singing that V6 (?) song too. NEWS always does well during the group change medley, don’t they?

And they looked fantastic, together and individually! White works really well on these guys, and the LIVEx3 concert outfits made me feel all nostalgic. I like that they have different hair colors, teehee.

Shige holds his microphone in a way that makes me giggle. As Massu often says in interviews, his hands do look quite soft!

Is this another of Massu’s famous fails? Definitely in comparison with Tegoshi’s much more precise movements, It seemed like he had either forgotten some of the dance moves or he didn’t realize it was time to dance.

But in the dance routine with KAT-TUN and Koyama…

He totally made up for it. <3 My apologies, dear Koyama, but my eyes were glued to the fabulous dancer of NEWS.

Here’s to hoping this new year will turn out to be a NEWS year! Fingers crossed for lots of future fangirly posts!

. . .

I found other songs that better suit my kind of romance but this song goes with the post title so let’s stick with it. :)

Even though it’s the name of a song, I hesitated in using that L word in the title, just like how I hesitate whenever saying it out loud in more than a “omg I love this cake!!!” way.

I only recently realized that I fear it, love. Loving someone, falling in love, being loved. It’s not so much a fear of being hurt, but rather of being the one unconsciously inflicting pain. I have the hardest time telling people those three powerful words, even to my family, so that means when I do say it — I mean it, truly and deeply.

I’m not saying I’m in love with Manny, noooo. That would be terribleeeeee. I’m treating this Manny affair as a short-term relationship because it’s so forbidden. I’m still a skeptic of the whole teenage love thing too, and like I said, I’m terrified of love in all forms. That is why I refuse to listen to my friends when I describe my feelings to them and they just nod their heads, saying “Girl, you got it baaaad” or “Sounds like love to me.” He is many of my firsts and logically I should feel very strongly towards him, more strongly than I’d felt towards any guy in the past — but it’s only a deep infatuation at this point. I wouldn’t exactly know what love is, anyway.

On to our history! Let’s make this as pointlessly detailed as possible, hmm? :DDD

Manny and I didn’t like each other as more than friends at first. Actually, I was in the beginning stages of depression at the time and was extra insecure and thought he hated my guts. You see, before he switched to his current job at Abercrombie, he was working at Hollister back then. He was walking a bit ahead of us that day, and Cappa, who loves to mess with him and feed him lies, told him that I too worked as a Hollister model.

I was already wary of him the moment I heard he worked at Hollister. Stores like Hollister and Abercrombie have a reputation for hiring only attractive people (or at least people who have a specific look), which automatically set Manny very high on the intimidation scale. But after Cappa joked about such a thing, I, not a model in any shape or form (even an in-store model which is really just a fancy name for a sales associate), shrunk into myself and died right there of mortification. He half-turned around while still walking, slowly looked me up and down, and sorta made this “uh-uh, no way is this ugly/unfashionable chick a model” face.

Me: God, will you kindly kill me now, please?

I probably imagined the death glares he kept shooting my way. Extreme paranoia, remember? -___- I asked him later (once we were friends) if this was true, and he said no of course not. But because I felt like he didn’t like me then, I clung to Cappa the entire time and acted like you don’t exist go awayyyy.

Understandably I was taken aback when he sent me a friend request on Facebook a few days after his roommate Benji did. After all, we were still pretty much strangers and he didn’t seem so fond of me. I accepted his request anyway. No reason not to.

Then, one day (September 22) while I was in the middle of struggling over my Facebook conversations with Benji, Manny sent me a message saying hi. How random of him, I thought, since, well, I DON’T KNOW YOU AND YOU HAVE A [beautiful but] MEAN FACE.

I didn’t really want to, but I started replying to him while simultaneously messaging his roommate. The longer I talked to the both of them and the more time I spent around them in person, I noticed something peculiar that I had brushed off as nothing… when in reality it was a blatant indication of something of greater significance.

I never felt comfortable around Benji. There were moments when I got close, but I could never fully relax when I was with him, even now, despite us being friends. With Manny, on the other hand, I felt entirely at ease once I got past that initial paranoia. I would be having long, personal, candid conversations with this almost-stranger similar to those I had only with Elaina and my three closest friends from high school. With Benji I had no conversations of the sort, lord no. With him it always had to be ~happy flowers and rainbow perfection~ aka Be Fake or Else He Will Think You’re a Weirdo. But with Manny… from the start it had been “HERE IS MY HEART NOW PLEASE TAKE CARE OF IT.” He had nothing to gain from befriending me and so I let it all pour out without fear.

Moreover, I liked talking to Manny. I don’t like talking to many people. This clearly meant something. Still, clueless Mimi took no notice.

Within a couple weeks, we grew closer. Closer than I initially expected us to be — i.e., not at all. Benji’s crush on me eventually fizzled out into friendship, or something like it. I still felt weird being around that guy, though, so I stopped talking to him online, which left just Manny for me to focus on. After four years at an all girls high school and then continuing on at a women’s college, it was nice having a male friend at last, nicer still that he goes to a different college in the city, living a life so unlike mine in the middle of a freaking ghost town.

Now, several months later, I’m going through our old messages on Facebook. I had no idea that we were messaging each other almost every day for three weeks, starting on that day in late September and lasting until immediately before I was sent to that mental institution and Manny deactivated his Facebook to focus on school.

I found it easy to confide in him. With his words he made me feel safe, protected. I was really surprised at how quickly he took me under his wing, treating me like a dear younger sister. It didn’t take long for me to see him as the protective big brother I never had.

I remember the first time he really showed he cared and that he was a nice guy. On that same day he first messaged me, there was a college event at the art museum close to his college. I wasn’t planning on going since the event started during my rock climbing class and would last until 11 at night. I probably wouldn’t make it and all that time spent traveling to Boston would be a waste. But — on my way back from rock climbing I ran into Sherry and her roommate Sera, both of whom were planning on going anyway even though it was late. I knew Sherry from my Japanese class but I didn’t know her yet. But I would much rather roam around Boston with strangers than study for my Japanese oral exam. To the city!

It took a while for us to arrive in Boston. And then we got lost trying to find the train station. Of course. Getting lost had wasted just enough time that when the train finally dropped us off in front of the museum…

The museum security guard would no longer let anyone in.

The event was supposed to end in 15 minutes, but unless we were already in there, we were too late, no admittance. Sera was visibly devastated, needing the museum to complete an art history assignment. Sherry and I didn’t know what else to do but envelop her in a big motherly hug right there, while college students wearing glow-in-the-dark bracelets/necklaces drifted past us to catch a ride home, casting weird looks our way. Then, from somewhere up ahead:

“Hey, is that Mimi?”

Sherry and I broke away from Sera to see who was calling me. Of all people, it was Manny! He and a group of his friends (one or two girls and a bunch of huge scary looking dudes) approached us. While Sera continued to moan and despair to herself on the sidelines, I explained our predicament. We also had no idea how to get back to our college and possibly would have to sleep in an alleyway for the night, but we’re all fine, thanks.

Manny & Co. would let us do no such thing. They offered us shelter at their residence hall since our bus wouldn’t come for a while. I admit that I eyed the big guys for a moment (they each topped six feet easily, compared to Manny’s five-foot-eight), but I knew Manny wouldn’t hurt us. His friends wouldn’t either.

Back at Manny and Benji’s dorm, the guys started figuring out how we were going to get home. What a strange sight it was, all these huge boys making a fuss over us three small girls who hardly look college-aged. I liked it, boys not being jerks. Not something I was used to.

In the end, we wasted even more time at their dorm and had to eventually blindly leave for our bus before it reached the stop first. Yep, without knowing where it was. Ultimately we just called a taxi cab to take us there. :P

Manny sent me a message the next day asking if we got back all right. It sounds insignificant, but it truly touched me that he cared to ask. It surprised me that he had recognized me outside the museum in the hazy moonlight. I have a generic and indistinguishable face, AND the guy had met me only twice before. That was the moment when I understood that I was no longer just the girl his roommate once liked.

I was a friend.

His acts of protective big-brother-ness continued to pile up. Most notable was that incident when his neighbor Micah became entranced by my weirdness. Manny had wrongly thought that Micah had wicked intentions and warned me about him. Some time after I went home, Manny actually confronted Micah about what he wanted from me. Cappa, who was there during the confrontation, later testified that Manny indeed threatened to put his neighbor in the hospital if he dared to hurt me.

I had assumed that he was kidding when he said he’d threatened Micah. Naturally. We hadn’t even known each other for a month yet, meeting in person a mere four times. Also, this occurred around the peak of my depression, during a period of severely altered reality. I wasn’t aware of much beyond my hypersensitive emotions.

Instead of me asking him if I could visit, Manny began inviting me to places. No no, not as dates! He asked if I wanted to come to a college party in Boston one time, and to the movies with his friends another time. But because of certain circumstances, I couldn’t go to either of those.

That day of the party, I had an essay to do and so I stayed at school to work on it. Erm, that didn’t happen either. Just countless hours of staring at my computer screen because my depression was hard at work that day, and when that happens you don’t feel like doing crap.

That was why I was still awake at 3 in the morning when Manny drunk dialed me.

He was super intoxicated, and I knew this only because he kept telling me he was, lol. But besides him saying quite random things at times and repeatedly informing me he broke a window with his fist, he didn’t seem drunk in the least.

Once the initial silliness of me not knowing how to deal with this wore off, my depression began speaking for me. It poured out stream after stream of negativity and self-hate to someone who was obviously in no state to understand.

Or so I thought. Manny began giving me advice, countering everything I said with shockingly profound insight. He really made me think, this guy, this drunkard. I couldn’t even respond except to ask how could he be saying such things while under the influence.

“A drunk mind speaks a sober heart,” he told me.

Drunk mind, sober heart. Huh. That definitely explains what he said to me some minutes later.

“Hey Mimi. Do you like me?” he suddenly asked, not bothering with transitions or subtlety.

I just laughed at such foolishness. “Of course I like you! I wouldn’t be talking to you at this hour if I didn’t like you.”

“Noooo,” he slurred. “I mean do you like-like me?”

A simple inquiry. I didn’t like him as more than a good friend. I should have provided an honest no and that would have been the end of it.

I should NOT have felt the blood rush to my cheeks and my heart race at the very question.

So — I stalled. Tried leading him to an unrelated subject. Talked my way around the question. Said nothing. Spoke slowly.

Ten minutes later, he pointed out that I hadn’t given him an answer. Dammit. How sharp of him.

Seeing no way out: “I like you just as a friend,” I said finally. I truly believed what I told him at the time, yet I had no explanation why, if it really were true, why it took me so long to provide an answer.

This guy is remarkably adept at reading people, figuring out their personalities, judging character. So, fast forward two months to when we were lying together in my dorm room (hold your horses, that will be in part ii of this tale). I asked him if he knew of my crush on him — and he answered yes. He had known all along.

Mortificationnnn.

So that time when he drunk dialed me wasn’t just the mindless rambles of alcohol. He must have suspected I liked him for a while. I definitely liked him before realizing it myself — THE SINGLE WORST KIND OF CRUSH because you can’t control your behavior if you’re not aware of it.

Our Facebook messages ended abruptly a few days after that call, on October 13, 2011. That was the day before my forced hospitalization.

At the psychiatric ward, we weren’t allowed to have our cell phones. We were, however, allowed to extract numbers from our phones in case we wanted to use the communal phone to make calls to loved ones. I know my family’s numbers, so I quickly copied down the numbers of close friends who care about me and know about my mental state. From high school, it was Cappa, Christa, Adele. From college, it was just Elaina whom I trusted with this information. Not even my roommate.

I paused for a second, then wrote down the number of one other person. For yet another reason I couldn’t explain, I wrote down Manny’s.

Each person reacted in their own way when I called:

• Christa: anger

• Adele: sorrow

• Cappa: frantic concern

• Elaina: levelheadedness

• Manny: laughing dismissal

Different as their reactions were, they all had the same message for me: You don’t belong there. Get out.

Originally, I wasn’t going to call Manny at all. I never intended on letting him know where I was, even as I was scribbling his number down. I had only known the guy for a little over a month, and so to call him and confide in him that I was locked up in a hospital? Too soon. But… for some reason, Cappa’s number wasn’t working. Manny was the only one who had her number for sure. I had to call him.

I detected hardly a gram of concern in his tone when he learned where I’d been for the past few days. He even laughed off the seriousness of my depression. Then again, that was how he always reacted to my negativity, whether through our Facebook messages or on the phone. Nothing new here. He promised to pass on my message to my closest friend.

Well. Months later, Cappa told me through Skype what had happened on the other end of the phone after I hung up. Manny was much more worried about me than he let on. He even tried calling the hospital, but after an eternity of being redirected to different lines, confidentiality issues prevented them from telling him if I was even a patient there. He looked and sounded almost angry when he found Cappa, telling her to do whatever the hell she could to get me out of that place.

He cared so much and I had no clue.

The hospital discharged me on Thursday, the 19th of October. I had been trapped inside a stuffy building for nearly a week; I had to leave for the city as soon as possible. So on that Sunday, I set out to meet Cappa in Boston because I was supposed to have met with her a week earlier but… you know. The loony bin.

That meeting never happened. Cappa had a religious commitment to attend to (aka Sunday liturgy), leaving me alone in the middle of the city with nothing to do but think. Thinking is dangerous. Let me tell you, you do not want to let someone suffering from depression out in the open by themselves. I had just been released from the hospital and was therefore as depressed as I had ever been. That day in the city proved it: everywhere I turned, I saw a way to remove myself from the world. Throw myself in front of a car. Fall onto train tracks in front of an incoming train. I even walked into a pharmacy and pondered over which drugs I could overdose on. It was awful. You really can’t understand the powerful grip depression has on a person until it happens to you. I’m never like this normally.

After Cappa called me and told me she couldn’t meet me that day, she said that she knew for sure that Manny wasn’t doing anything and that I should go hang out with him. I had yet to fully comprehend that I had in fact fallen for him gradually, but I couldn’t deny that my heartbeat quickened at the mention of his name. I couldn’t explain it; I just felt it. It confused me.

I wandered around for two hours in the chilly autumn day, literally doing nothing but wandering. On several occasions I pulled out my phone and thought about calling Manny. Each time, the fear of being a bother overwhelmed my longing for company. Back in my pocket the phone went.

It got so cold and windy that I eventually hopped on a train for warmth. Fifteen minutes later I mysteriously found myself within the perimeter of Manny’s college.

I risked 15 more minutes of developing hypothermia before I worked up enough nerve to call him and ask if I could drop by. He sounded fine with it, but…

He emerged from his residence hall slowly and sleepily because oh my God I had woken him up asdfghjkl. D:

He didn’t look angry at me for waking him up like I badly feared. On the contrary, it was the first time he had smiled upon seeing me, which surprised me so much that I moved forward numbly as he reached out for a hug. Once inside, we talked a bit about where I’d been, how I was, what he’d been doing. Catching up. We then headed off to his dining hall in a different building because he was hungry.

We could easily be mistaken as a couple, I caught myself thinking as we walked, noticing people staring at this mismatched pair. The thought hit me suddenly, entirely unexpectedly, and it sent a flame of warmth to my face.

I sneaked a sideways glance at him, at his face that I oddly found so much more beautiful than before, and I blushed harder and turned my head away. The second I understood what I was doing, the pieces of the puzzle all came together.

Took me long enough. :P

The day did not end well, though. Later, after Benji and his new love interest joined us to go see a movie, I spent the duration of the walk to the theater just loathing my very existence, to the point where I was physically tortured by it. I never felt as worthless as I did then. It took tremendous willpower to prevent myself from actually running away from them, and I was doing rather well. Until we entered the theater.

Benji and Friend went up ahead, but I reached out and grabbed the hem of Manny’s sweatshirt, pulling him back. I just told him in a low voice that I’ll be heading back to my college now. His face registered concern and he wanted to walk me back, but I just had to get out, away. Immediately.

In the end I HAD run away, after all.

The next time I saw him would be three weeks later. It was a time of much-needed recovery for me, and I had to ban myself from leaving campus for the time being. Meanwhile, I focused on schoolwork and mentally healing and trying to figure out what Manny was to me.

Honest to God, I believed that he saw me as only a little sister, and I was content with such arrangements despite my crush on him. Otherwise, I would have never asked if I could spend the night at his dorm one mid-November evening. That was the night everything changed.

[to be continued, hehe]

Until next time,

~ Mimi :Db

DON’T GET ME WRONG, I still love him and the rest of NEWS. I just can’t spazz over how beautiful he or Yuuko or anyone else is.

But I will continue to flail and fangirl, don’t you worry, journal! NEWS still has my support. I’m just… well, I shall explain in the Real Life section. ^–^

I’m not sure if it’s because there isn’t as much information floating around or if I’ve just been MIA internet-wise, but has there been a curious lack of reports on Tegomass’s 3rd live? And by reports, I mean information in any form, whether photographic, auditory, or written. Especially photographic. I’m not entirely sure what all of their outfits look like, except for Tegoshi’s all-white ensemble and Massu’s sparkles and the bear-eared short-sleeved hoodies.

I think it’s because I haven’t been as stalker-ish as I was before. A few months ago I would stalk both Japanese and foreign fans for any NEWS-/Tegomass-related info I could get my hands on. I have found a few reports and saw some news footage or two, but not much beyond that.

I DO know that Shige and Nakamaru visited one con and Koyama recently came alone to another! And that Cheerleader Yuuko made her debut and supposedly looked stunning! But no photos of her, boo. ;__;

I think I’ve been keeping up with most of the major NEWS news. Uhm…

• Koyama’s drama Lucky Seven

• Shige’s novel Pink and Grey

• Shige’s official name change

• Tegomass’s radio show

• Tegoshi and his various Itte Q adventures

• Tegoshi in the Hotaru no Hikari movie and Deka Wanko SP

• Massu and… er…

Does Massu have anything?

If not, then that’s sad for Massu. ): But as for me, I’m more than satisfied with all the lovely group cross-talks and photoshoots we’ve had lately. Their group dynamic has improved, don’t you think? We’ll be seeing them really soon during the Johnny’s Countdown, which will be their first appearance before an audience as NEWS in a long time.

In eager anticipation of this new NEWS, I *finally* got around to changing the header of this journal! And yes, I intentionally placed camwhore Tego-bear closest to the camera and poor Shige-bear way in the back. ^vv^

. . .

How in the world did I land myself a hot guy?

Erm. Let’s try this again in a less superficial way.

Mannyyyyyyyyyyy. Such a lovely human being of internal substance. ♥

I used to be a bitter bitch when it came to romance. Haha, okay, that’s a bit of an overstatement. It’s more accurate to say that I would side-eye people who were all stupid-happy-bubbly-sighing because of their significant other. I just didn’t understand the emotional aspect of it because I never experienced anything stronger than an unrequited crush and thus dubbed it silly. Yeah, even though I write mainly for the romance genre.

That was before I… got me a boyfriend.

AHHHH I KNOW I CAN’T BELIEVE IT EITHER.

The process of the two of us finding each other wasn’t that long, but it was pretty complicated, somewhat movie-cliche, and required some trial-and-error. But I will tell the story anyway because I want to remember my first relationship ever, even if it eventually ends badly. #pessimist

(Forgive my use of hashtags; Manny said I’m not funny at all and so I took that as a challenge and became a Twitter comedian. So far — damn him, he’s right.)

(Also, my new friend Tangy finds it to be a cute and chick-flicky story, as demonstrated through her reactions that she typed out on Facebook instead of expressing them out loud while I was verbally telling the tale in front of her:

Awww yeah, look at those fantastic censoring skillz.)

Actually, I think I’ll hold out on the story for the next entry. I spent two and a half hours telling the long tale to friends so it deserves to have its own post, possibly in short story form if I’m feeling not too lazy. I’ll write about Manny himself today. :D

For once, I know the guy’s feelings are genuine. It wasn’t love at first sight, meaning that he doesn’t like me only for my face. He told me that he started liking me a little over a month after we met — around the time of my hospitalization and after he got to know me. And he really knows me, since I had told him every one of my dark thoughts and he even calmed me down over the phone during a particularly bad period of my Sadness. I can honestly say he saved me from something terrible.

Even after knowing how messed up I can be, he still likes me. No — he said he likes me because of my flaws. Unbelievable, isn’t it? You know that KAT-TUN song, the one that translates to “I love the you that you hate”? That’s it, describes his feelings perfectly. I had even asked him why he likes me because there’s really not much appealing about me.

He said the generic things that most guys will say, that I’m smart and nice. But then he said something surprising: He likes that I’m insecure. He likes my vulnerability, my total lack of confidence in myself, that constant apparent need to be taken care of. I always unconsciously push him away and distance myself from him whenever he steps too close, and he likes that. He likes that I’m hard to get. I don’t chase him like the other girls do. I make him work.

What a masochistic weirdo.

But the moral of the story is there’s hope for everyone! If I can find someone who likes me for who I am, then every lonely person in the world can surely find their special someone too. :)

Now, what’s HE like?

We’re complete opposites in personality and looks. I am relatively fair-skinned and chubby-cheeked and just squishy all over. -___- He has a dark complexion and beautifully sculpted cheekbones and a beautiful body and sexy arms (from tennis, American football, and lightweight wrestling) and lovely hair that he keeps in a fauxhawk and the longest eyelashes that curl on their own. SIGH.

I have questioned if I only like him because he’s beautiful — because he really really is — but then I would remember the physical ache beneath my chest and the warmth that fills my belly and the uncontrollable smile that my lips form at the very thought of him, and I just know appearance isn’t the only factor. That has never happened before in my nineteen years of living.

He is… rather like Tegoshi LOL. Before you judge, that totally isn’t why I like him. He’s not quite self-centered like Tegoshi, but he’s the most shameless person I’ve ever met. He doesn’t get embarrassed, ever. And he’s a bit conceited, close to cocky. He oozes confidence with every action. He loooves his mother but doesn’t talk about his dad much. He likes that I’m feminine and ladylike and I tend to speak politely. His voice is kind of high for a guy, especially when he laughs/giggles. He giggles a lot, usually when he’s in bed with me — AND I MEAN THAT IN THE MOST INNOCENT WAY POSSIBLE. -///- He just loves tickling me because I despise being tickled and he finds my involuntary overreactions funny.

Aside from being kind of Tegoshi-like, he’s just an interesting person overall. He can be such a typical American guy at times, in the sports and gaming areas in particular. He swears like a sailor when he’s around his boys, and it’s even worse while he’s playing games. Unfortunately, my language is the most easily influenced part of me, and once he noticed that he was rubbing off on me in my vocabulary, he promised to tone it down when I’m around.

He is a workaholic in both his schoolwork and his job, which nicely complements my lethargy and utter laziness. He deactivated his Facebook for the whole semester to focus on school (he spent most of that time playing games instead, though). Then, a few days ago, that crazy guy worked 18 hours at his job as an impact and model at Abercrombie & Fitch. I’ve visited him at work, and after watching him be so quick and efficient compared to his coworkers (and then doing it for EIGHTEEN HOURS), no wonder they offered to promote him to manager (which he declined because of school).

There’s also more to this guy than meets the eye. His exterior is one of someone totally chill and relaxed. But early on in our days of getting to know each other, back when I was deeply suffering from depression and didn’t know it, he revealed to me a darker side to him that I never would have guessed he had. From what I could gather, something significant happened in his past that changed him and hurt him badly, and now he goes through life wearing this mask of aloofness. It’s a defense mechanism that keeps people from knowing the real him. If they don’t know his weaknesses, they can’t hurt him.

Except… he drops that mask when he’s with me. Partially, at least, more so than he does with most people. He said there’s something about me that brings out the real him. He can be honest when he’s talking to me, and I know this is the truth because we’ve had some weirdly candid conversations during each of our nightly sessions together.

Oh. <3 We make such an odd pair but I love it.

Such a pity that this is a forbidden romance that can’t end well.

Sometimes I also wonder if I like him so much because I know he’s exactly
what my parents do not want for their only daughter. :P It’s all a matter of skin color for them, as Manny has dark skin that makes me smile when I look down at our interlaced fingers and see the stark contrast in color, and that is NOT okay with the parental units. When we first met I initially thought he was black lol. He is Indian but he acts so… American, which is ambiguous but it’s the best description of him. His behavior is a bizarre blend of ghetto and preppy white boy.

My new good friend/sex advisor Sherry suggests that I learn Hindi and then emancipate myself from my family if they disapprove.

These are the kinds of people I attract. >___>

And then there’s his parents. Well, his mom at least, since his dad left. He’s Muslim, and I know that some strict Muslim parents don’t let their children date non-Muslims. So if both his mother and my parents disapprove of this relationship, does that mean we have a bit of a Romeo and Juliet complex going on here? :D Nah, he said that his mom would love me because I’m a good girl and my school has a good reputation. And his last girlfriend was white, so I doubt she was Muslim either.

Speaking of Romeo and Juliet, I’ve been searching for a song that best fits our type of romance, YES I AM A SAP. So far, it’s a three-way tie between Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” “At the Beginning” from Anastasia, and Paramore’s “The Only Exception.” I think Love Story might be winning but let’s just hope we don’t meet the same fate as R&J, hmm?

As for what this mystery man looks like… it’s probably immoral to post a picture of him in a public journal, right? Especially since I take these pictures without his knowledge. (Hey, IN MY DEFENSE he does the same to me when we’re on webcam so I should think we’re even.) It also doesn’t help that the picture I have is one of him in the middle of getting dressed for work. Oh. Haha. Funny story about that.

Lareen [looking at the picture]: Why is he taking off his pants?
Me: Oh no, he’s actually putting them back on.
Lareen: …
Me: That’s not helping things, is it.

Ah, why not, let’s post a small photo anyway… after I run it through a few filters to make him somewhat less distinguishable and myself feel less guilty.

I may be a tiiiiny bit biased but I find him so unbelievably beautiful. ♥ Too beautiful, even. I walked into Abercrombie yesterday and when I saw him standing there immersed in his work, he actually took my breath away. I don’t feel worthy of being with such a creature. I feel grubby. Not nearly pretty enough for him. It also doesn’t help that he weighs twenty pounds fewer than I do and that makes me super self-conscious whenever he touches my bare skin. He has not an ounce of fat on him, seriously. -__-

Oh, I want to see him so badly! I don’t think I’ll be able to be with him for quite a while, likely not until my winter break is over because my parents will kill both of us if they find out that I even know him. That’s not until the 23rd of January, wahhhh. D: Can I go back to college now, please? At least back there I had the freedom to leave every weekend to go see him, or even just leave in general. I can’t really visit him at the mall where he works anymore because my parents are getting suspicious about why I keep asking to go there alone.

I’m hoping that second semester will be much better than the first, socially and academically. I do feel much better regarding my depression, but is it really gone? I forgot to take my medication for four days. Judging by the major withdrawal symptoms I suffered from, that was a dumb thing to do. Were they withdrawal symptoms or was it the original depression? I don’t like being so dependent on my medicine… but it’s for the best.

In the meantime, I need to find ways to entertain myself. So far I’ve been doing nothing but playing indie games and trying to get into writing again. Come on, self, you need to be productive!

Until next time,

~ Mimi ;)

Mhmm, it’s officially depression. Not just depression, but that plus social anxiety, extreme paranoia, and possibly attention deficit disorder (aka ADD or ADHD-PI).

I already knew about the social anxiety, but the others were news to me. ADD? Paranoia? And I had been denying that I had depression to anyone who asked. Think about it, doesn’t it sound so whiny, a first-year in college suffering from depression when there’s really nothing that wrong with her life? Cliche and typical and not very worthy of attention, in my opinion.

Then they pulled me out of school against my wishes.

Allow me to replay exactly how that happened two months ago.

October 14th. A Friday morning, 9 am. I had my scheduled weekly meeting with my counselor, though I had skipped the previous week’s appointment because of an overload of work. Thus, I had two weeks’ worth of news to tell her. So I packed my backpack with my Japanese texts before heading out, because I had class at 9:50 right after the meeting.

Originally I scheduled these meetings with the counselor because of my social anxiety. After the first meeting, it became clear to her that it’s much more than that, and she chose to focus more on my other problems, particularly on my Sadness.

With each meeting, my situation became worse and worse. I began experiencing these periods I call the Sadness. Occurring sporadically — once a week or two weeks — the Sadness is exactly what it sounds like: short, hour-long bursts of the most gut-wrenching sadness, loneliness, and worthlessness a person can possibly feel. It would happen for no reason at all, or it would be triggered by the smallest thing. In any case, the pain and crying would become nearly unbearable each time… to the point where I would be willing to do anything to stop it. The Sadness would ease away whenever I either found someone to talk to or fell asleep, but I would be terrified of what I was capable of doing to myself whenever it occurred because I would lose all control over my thoughts and actions.

I made sure to emphasize to the counselor that I was fine most of the time: not quite happy, but usually flat with spikes of good moods. I laugh and smile like any normal person would. The moments of Sadness are rare. It’s nothing to worry about.

I guess she really didn’t like what she was hearing by that October 14th meeting, because she chose right then and there to send me to the hospital.

Well. I HAD signed a contract before these meetings, stating that the school had a right to hospitalize me if they felt I wasn’t mentally stable enough to continue on with classes. But still. THESE THINGS ALWAYS HAPPEN TO ME. TT-TT

I wasn’t allowed to leave the counselor’s office while we waited for the ambulance. Meanwhile, Counselor had me sign some confidentiality forms while she sent an email to my class dean. The dean, in turn, informed each of my professors that I would not be on campus until further notice. You would not believe how relieved I was that my dean did that, because it’s a big deal when professors are notified by her and that means I won’t be penalized for missing classes.

Since I wasn’t allowed back into my dorm to retrieve necessary belongings, I had to allow the ambulance to take me to the emergency room with just my backpack on. Uh, and the clothes I was wearing, of course. :P Even though I was in perfect physical condition, they strapped me into the gurney and that made me feel even crazier than I was.

The emergency room. I never thought I’d have ended up here, and in a conscious state, no less. It didn’t matter what I’d brought with me anyway, because an old nurse came in my room, instructed me to strip down and put on a hospital gown, and locked my belongings away behind a metal gate. I had figured that the purpose of the hospital gown was to make it easier for doctors to do medical checks, but it was actually to make sure I didn’t have weapons strapped to my body. o___O

I remained in that bed for four long hours, while security guards took turns watching me do nothing from their post outside my room. Doctors came in to check on my medical history and question me about my lifestyle. I kept insisting that while, yes, I have suicidal tendencies and yes, I do hold a scarily apathetic view towards what happens to me, I really don’t think this is depression so can you please let me get back to college now, kthxbai. They didn’t buy it.

So to the psychiatric ward I went!

If you’ve ever been to the medical ward of a hospital, the psychiatric ward looks a bit like that in terms of color and cleanliness and smell. I’d say that’s where the similarities end, though.

It’s a small hospital so the psychiatric ward, which they call D-10 (the real place is named with a different letter and number, but you get the idea), had a capacity of 15-20 patients. Tight and cozy. I was put in a room with another patient who had arrived a few hours before I did.

Is it weird to say that she and I bonded and that I prefer this crazy chick over my real college roommate? :P She was a woman in her mid-thirties, if I had to guess. She suffers from every disorder known to man, I’m tellin’ ya. She’d been hospitalized many times before. This wasn’t her first time in D-10, either; she actually chose to return to this particular hospital because she likes it the best of all the ones she’d been to.

The two of us would have the most depressing talks at night as we lay in our respective beds. At the same time, it felt so good to get all these thoughts out of my head without someone actively judging me. My roommate creeped me out sometimes because she would either sob uncontrollably, talk to herself, laugh for no reason, or mope around like she hates the world. Which she probably does. But that didn’t make her company any less enjoyable. :)

My room had two beds, a table, a sink with a mirror in the room, and a little room with a toilet. They made it as safe as possible but honestly if I really wanted to hurt myself I could get creative. The rooms actually didn’t have any security cameras, but they had that covered. They checked on us every fifteen minutes throughout the day. And night. Mhmm.

They went through all the things I brought with me and confiscated anything questionable. That included my mini stapler and my lanyard that carried my room key and swipe card. I’m surprised that they let me keep my mechanical pencils and shoelaces, actually. :P

Freedom wasn’t that limited, but we had restrictions on certain things. Like a curfew, for example. They allowed me to have my iPod, but no cellphones. After I extracted a few numbers from my phone, they took it away and kept it until I was discharged. So the only people who knew about my hospitalization while I was there were Cappa, Christa, Adele, Manny, and my new college friend Elaina. I felt bad for worrying them all, but oh, I was so touched at their concern for me. Even that slight bit from Manny, whom I had met just a month earlier.

D-10 staff made me promise not to run away. O_o I did promise, but running away didn’t even seem possible. All windows and exits were kept locked at all times. Even the showers were locked and had to be unlocked whenever you wanted to use it.

It wasn’t until after I was hospitalized did I understand how depressed I was. I did NOTHING during my stay there. I would just curl up on my bed and stare at the wall for hours. Either that or sleep. The other patients would be more social, mingling in the public areas, but I hardly left my room except to shower and eat. The nurses and counselors were particularly concerned at why I never spoke unless spoken to.

But I am ecstatic to announce that I am feeling positively lovely wonderful now! Really, I don’t even feel like the same person I was two months ago. GOOD. I never ever want to go back. I had a terrifying moment of relapse a while ago, but hopefully that was all and not just a taste. It involved an embarrassing breakdown in my professor’s office hours, with me running out of his office in uncontrollable tears.

I’ve been seeing a real psychiatrist twice a week and although I’m not sure how helpful he’s being, it’s nice being able to talk to someone. He only prescribed an antidepressant at first. Then he doubled the dosage when I complained of hypersomnia (sleeping too much), which doesn’t really make sense but okay, you’re the doctor.

The antidepressant took a while to work, though. So for the first month I was pretty much kept on suicide watch. And for good reason: just a few days after I was released from the hospital and therefore WAS STILL VERY MUCH DEPRESSED, I recklessly went into the city by myself. I wandered around Harvard Square for two and a half hours alone. And everywhere I looked, I kept finding horrifying ways in which I could kill myself. Yeah. It was bad. I ended up dropping by Manny and Benji’s dorm for a bit because I couldn’t stand the loneliness any longer. I cheered up a bit at the sight of Manny, who knows what I had gone through and gave me a big hug upon seeing me.

But later, things got bad. While I was headed to the movie theater with Manny, Benji, and Benji’s girlfriend/crush/whatever-it’s-still-ambiguous, I was plagued the whole time with the worst case of self-hate I ever had. I felt so unworthy of being around these people, so useless, unneeded, inferior. I actually made it into the theater when I pulled Manny aside and told him in a low voice that I had to go right now. So basically I had run away from them. I spent the next few miserable, lonely hours getting lost in Boston.

My doctor paid special attention to these feelings of worthlessness and inferiority, fueled by my thoughts. So — next came the crazy pills.

Haha, it’s really called perphenazine but I call it that because it’s used in the treatment of schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder.  It freaked me out when I googled the name and I saw that my doc had prescribed me an antipsychotic. Then again, I show a lot of the symptoms of schizophrenia. Maybe telling my doctor that I hear voices wasn’t a smart idea? :P The medicine just blocks abnormal activity in the brain, so it works by suppressing the self-hateful thoughts that my brain feeds me every minute of the day.

That medicine was SO odd. For the first month, it made me feel like an empty vessel. I stopped hearing the voices that told me the terrible things about myself — but since those voices occupied my thoughts nearly 24/7, the medicine took them away and left me feeling curiously empty. Not sad, not happy. Just… nothing. I could no longer feel that extreme sadness that sent me to the hospital. Likewise, I was unable to feel excitement. Only numbness. I went through life without thinking anything. Even though that scared me a bit, I preferred that emptiness to the depression.

I’m feeling soooo much better now. My new college friends have been especially supportive, one in particular.

Elaina is my mental mirror twin. Physically we cannot look any more different (she: blond, short-haired, green-eyed, small-framed). Our mental states are very similar yet contrasting at the same time. You see, while I suffer from sadness, she is crazy. So, if I could describe our emotions (and the way we express them) with colors, mine would be blue (isolation, tears, bottled up feelings, self-loathing) while Elaina’s would be red (passionate and artful expressions, drawing things in her blood, cutting, trashing her room, anger at the world).

She understands. She’s just a bit difficult to get a hold of because she’s dealing with tough times right now. But the times we do have together, I cherish. She’s given me so much support and advice that I honestly think she might have played a part in saving me. We met during rock climbing and she was all friendly and whatnot, but we didn’t connect until one random night after climbing. We were both stressed out of our minds from work, and so we decided to meditate in the basement of the campus chapel. What began as a discussion about her being atheist somehow turned into a two-hour-long conversation about ourselves. We formed a deep connection over that. Oh, but we do have lighthearted conversations too!

Once I came back from rock climbing with Elaina. She’s going through so much with her family and she’s willingly killing herself with her work, so most of the time I let her do the talking and use me as a verbal punching bag. I don’t mind, lol. She’s done a ton for me.

After she finished emptying her thoughts, she took a breath, calmly turned to me, pointed at the hickey on my neck, and asked, “So how did this come about?”

Lol, and then later, as I got into my Tale of Nightly Adventures in a Dorm with Two Boys (that makes me sound like such a bad person :P), her comments turned into:

“Any Frenching?”

“Eeee, this sounds like a shoujo manga!”

“The next time you see him, don’t look into his eyes when he talks to you; stare at his lips instead.”

Elaina is so helpful, isn’t she.

But who is this mysterious man I’ve been keeping a secret from this journal? I wanted to wait it out until I found out what was going on between the two of us before revealing his identity. Well, after one month, I can finally reveal who he is. In true Koyama’s-nikki style, the boy is…

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Manny!

I’ll go into detail in a Manny-filled post in the near future (because after finals week I have a month of NO SCHOOL HELL YES), but I shall leave you with this, journal: I am no longer #foreveralone!

Or a lot of other things, for that matter. ^///^ I know I pledged to hold nothing back on this journal but I wonder how much I can tell without getting horribly judged. :Pv

Until next time,

~ Mimi :Dv

I was one of those fans stuck in that in-between place of almost expecting it to happen soon but not quite believing that it would actually happen.

I just felt numb for the rest of the day. And the subsequent days. Right before I found out, I had woken up to work on a paper due that day. But when I saw the news, I just couldn’t bring myself to write the stupid paper. Ended up turning it in way late because I lost all motivation to work on it.

But that was forever ago and I’m more accepting of it now. I hate how much of a realist I can be but I still have doubts about the future success of NEWS-4. But I’ll be with them every step of the way! They can finally all gather for photoshoots now. :DDD

And look! Tegomasu no Mahou!

It arrived in my mailbox right after I got back from the hospital. ^-^ I’m in a rush to get this entry done so I can do homework so I’ll just say this quickly: Yuki Daruma, Mahou no Melody, and Hanabi are my favorite tracks. <3 Mr. Freedom is probably my least favorite, just because I’m a total English snob and I don’t like the use of English phrases in Japanese songs. Me being picky. :)

Also.

HAPPY 24th BIRTHDAY TO TEGOSHI YUYA!

Late as usual but this is nothing new from me lol. I gush about this fellow way too often so I shall refrain from doing that now. Just know that I still love him, haha.

And because she’s fandom-related :D –

HAPPY 17th BIRTHDAY TO SUPERKESHIGOMU!

I think you’re seventeen. Correct me if I’m wrong. I actually had been working on a gift for you for months but then college started and I lost my sanity and… yeah. Busy times. I will finish it once I return home to retrieve some more cotton and you will receive it for Christmas instead!

. . .

(Entry written pre-hospitalization so I’ll talk as if this happened then. Mental hospital tales will come after I write this 7-page essay. -___-)

If it wasn’t official the twenty times I said this before then it’s official now: I will someday end up allowing a rapist to lead me into an alley and later dispose of my body in a landfill.

It seems impossible for me to not know, but it wasn’t until lately did I see the extent of my utter cluelessness and inexperience.

HE WAS WELL ON HIS WAY TO GETTING ME INTO HIS BED AND I DIDN’T REALIZE IT OH GOD.

Oh hang on. He did get me into his bed. WITH HIM.

You are surely wondering two things by this point now: This is not Mimi who are you and what the hell is going on, and Is there someone in the world who’s THAT stupid?

You’re looking at her, darlin’.

You see, Saturday, October 1 was a day of many boys: Manny and Benji, meeting their old friends from high school, getting to know the boys of their college, Cappa’s on/off boyfriend, reuniting with Dathan (whom I haven’t seen since the 8th grade! :O) — oh, too much testosterone to handle in one short Saturday. @__@

…and then there was Micah.

I’ll go into this newcomer later in this entry because I want to get the ordinary things from that day out of the way first.

I had made my way into the bustling city once again for yet another college event. Hey, I love this school but if I stay here all the time I’ll go crazy. Crazier, I mean. The city is my time of release.

Met up with my three Boston friends — Benji, Manny, and Cappa — and headed off to the event. It was a typical college thing, jammed with vendors advertising things and giving away free stuff and offering sign-ups for special offers. Nothing new. Manny left the event with a backpackful of energy drinks because that’s what college kids live on lol.

This one was a pretty large event, though, and it included stage performances from local celebrities as well as concerts from really famous ones. :D They held a fashion show at one point and Cappa was actually supposed to walk the runway for that, but she’s such a good friend that she decided not to in order to spend the day with me. ♥

Then there were the little competitions that took place on stage or on the ground in the middle of a crowd. Benji and Manny tried out a dance competition, oh those boys. There was also a contest in which total strangers had to make out on stage, and the best pair won free tickets for something presumably expensive. -_____-

I got to see Dathan for the first time in 5 years! (By the way, this is a legitimate name on babynames.com, not just one of my crappy made-up ones when I can’t think of an alias. I checked. It still sounds incredibly silly but nothing else suits his real name. Sorry, man. :P) We used to hang out in middle school before going our own ways, each to our respective single-sex schools. I know I’ve mentioned how I have trouble talking to guys, but I grew up with this kid and I used to be around him a lot back during my tomboy days and so I’m fine with talking to him now. Online, that is.

I struck up an out-of-the-blue convo with him via Facebook chat in hopes that by talking to a boy I’m already comfortable talking to, I’ll learn how to better talk to these two new guys in my life, as well as any future boys.

Me: hey dathan, you busy right now?

Dathan: i just finished my calc
lucky you
lol whatsup?

Me: nothing, just trying to learn how to talk to guys
figured i’d start with someone i’m more comfortable talking to

Dathan: i see

Me: so hi

Dathan: you interested in some one now huh ;P
Hi

Me: haha am i that obvious?

(I have a horrible habit of switching from ~flawless typing skills~ to purposely making mistakes in my sentences, depending on who I’m talking to. It took me the longest time to get used to leaving out terminal punctuation and uncapitalizing “I.” And OH, the comma splices I’ve forced myself to do lately because people don’t seem to like periods very much. Judge me if you want but I HAVE SOCIAL ANXIETY DAMMIT. D:)

Dathan, as it turned out, is still as sweet as ever — and he even lost (outwardly, at least) the perverted mind and immaturity that he had in adolescence. He’s so kind that he ended up becoming like my 10th therapist, with me pouring my heart out to him for hours at a time. And it was nice, because up until then I had only told women my problems and I got to see things from a guy’s POV. He gave me great advice, particularly relationship ones, being a guy himself and having had six girlfriends before, that playboy. It was so typically boyish of him to think it’s hot that I like girls -___-, though he is dead set against me getting my first kiss from anyone other than a boy.

No guarantees, man. ;D

We had arranged to meet up at that college event. That turned out to be a bit difficult because we haven’t seen each other in so many years, and I had changed a ton in the past year alone, never mind the past five years. When I spotted him in the crowd, I ran up to him and gave all 6’3″ of him the gigantic hug l had promised.

I was fine talking to him online. But how did I fare in real life after the hug?

Erm… yeah, that didn’t go so well.

After I introduced him to my new friends, I stood there and stared creepily at him while they talked to each other. And I wasn’t being subtle about it either, since he’s exactly one foot taller than me and I had to crane my neck up. I knew deep down that this is just my childhood friend and I had no reason to fear, but I got irrationally intimidated by him for the five minutes we met and couldn’t say a word. On Facebook afterward he told me me I seemed entirely normal but of course I can’t believe that.

The moment Dathan left, Manny turned to us and blurted, “Daaamn, that is the sexiest Asian I have ever met.” Even more surprisingly, Benji agreed with, “I know, and he’s even taller than me!”

For the rest of the day, any time the topic of Dathan came up those guys would refer to him as “that sexy Asian” or “Mimi’s really hot friend.”

They’re straight, I swear. :P They just like to mess around with the rest of us by implying that they do unspeakable things to each other when we’re out of the room. And, haha, I watched Manny have this following exchange with a friend in the hall:

Manny: Hey, man, I love your chest.
Random fella: Thanks. You have a beautiful jawline.

Is this normal? :P

I’m learning to love these boys like they’re the big brothers I never had. Manny especially is acting big-brother-ish. Even though I’m half a year older than Manny and a full year older than Benji. It’s just kinda weird (incestuous? lol) because Benny and I had just gotten over our infatuation with each other. We’re destined to be friends and that’s all.

It also doesn’t help that I think Manny is really beautiful too. Yeah, basically in my eyes everyone is gorgeous except me. >___>

But anyway. They’re right about Dathan lol. I wasn’t expecting my childhood friend to have grown to be so good looking, and he doesn’t look striking at all in his Facebook pictures so I had only been expecting a bigger version of my 8th grade buddy. So that was a pleasant surprise.

Super sweet, understanding, funny, loyal, smart (waitlisted at MIT, danggg), AND physically attractive? Did I also mention that he cooks and almost single-handedly takes care of his one-year-old brother and plays piano and is into Asian entertainment? Crap, I’m gonna end up falling for this guy hard if we proceed with our speech therapy sessions like we’d planned. He’s only complicating the situation by repeatedly mentioning that he wouldn’t mind if I dated him and that he could give me my first kiss (“I can either pick you up and wrap my hands around your waist or you can be on your tippy toes and I’ll move down a bit” @_@; he totally put this image in my head on purpose because he knows I have a huge crush on him) and that I’d make a cute girlfriend, even after he learned that I’m as messed up as a person can possibly be.

Oh, boys. Let’s just lock myself up in my dorm room and never talk to them again, how’s that sound? Dathan was like “Nooooooooooo” when I mentioned this plan to him, but let’s face it. It’s no loss to the men out there, believe me.

Soooo. Moving on to this Micah I mentioned earlier.

Micah is kind of a scene boy. I’ve never met a scene kid before (except for cousin Ame but I never see her) and my first time was… interesting, to say the least. I’d thought it was just a stereotype but apparently not! He has the typical side-swept scene hair, brown and thick. Not dyed, though. He said he used to straighten it every day but he stopped because it made him feel like a girl. His glasses make him look ultra nerdy and not very pretty, but when he takes them off and gets real close to you (I’ll explain how this happened in a while but it involves my naivete and lack of judgement), he has these most gorgeous chocolate brown eyes, omg. He’s really good looking in general; you just can’t tell unless he takes off those glasses. My friend Elaina is infatuated with him.

He’s not the type of boy you would imagine me associating with at all. He skateboards. Listens to angry death metal screamy music. Wears women’s skinny jeans because he’s so thin and tall that men’s jeans don’t fit right on him. o.O Has that ear gauge thing most scene kids have. Does not drink soda at all. :O

Lol, that last one isn’t associated with scene kids but bear with me. :P

Cappa and I met him in the halls. He lives in the dorm across from Manny and Benji. He was with two friends, a boy and a girl, and the two men were evidently shocked that the girl had never kissed a boy before. When I piped up and said I haven’t either, their heads swiveled over to me and their faces just read “holy crap no way.”

Micah got so curious about me then. He kept asking me questions about my life and I gave him whatever he desired to know — and it became pretty clear to everyone that I was no ordinary girl. Haha, during dinner I got a bit annoyed that they kept talking about kissing boys boys boys and this little outburst came out of me: “Does it have to be a boy?”

That shocked them into silence for a minute, lol.

He got so into it, asking me questions and me responding with something controversial. :P We moved from the dining area, to Manny and Benji’s room, and finally to his room.

He was teaching me how to be more comfortable around boys and so I didn’t think much of it when he asked me to sit with him on his bed. I also didn’t think much of it when he encouraged me to hold his hand, cuddle with him, and let him pull me down until we were both lying in bed together. I really thought he was doing this all to teach me HOW to do these things in the future. Yes. That’s how naive I am.

Manny came in at one point, stared at us for a second, then left wordlessly. Later, Cappa came in and informed me that Manny wanted to talk to me for a second. Wondered what that was all about. :/

Back in Manny and Benji’s room, both of them told me to be careful with Micah. Because just the day before, Micah had been saying how all he wanted was a one night stand.

At first I was offended that they would think I was so easy like that. I even exclaimed at them indignantly, “I’m not going to sleep with him! What kind of person do you think I am? >:(“

Then I stopped. Thought about it. Lost all color in my face. And leaned against Benji’s bed, put my head in my arms, and moaned, “How was I so stupid?”

Because after hearing from Manny that Micah might have had an ulterior motive, it all clicked. All his actions of the past hour or two. He was trying to be my first everything. He had gotten close enough (mere centimeters away) to steal a kiss — and he probably would have too, if Cappa hadn’t come in and told me that Manny wanted to talk to me.

He was touching me, journal. No no no no, not anywhere bad, don’t get me wrong. >///< But while I was all snuggled up against him he would slowly trace his fingers along my forearm. Stroke my legs, hips, stomach, waist. Tickle me, maybe just to hear my involuntary squeals. It did make me uncomfortable at first, but I still figured that he was only trying to help my social anxiety so I let him. But after Manny pulled me aside, I had a hard time seeing his actions as helpful.

The warning bells really started sounding later, after I returned to Micah from Manny and told him that I had to leave. He got a bit suspicious, asked if Manny had said something to me. Well, he did but I couldn’t let Micah know that I was kind of scared of him now. Instead, I just said that the boys had pointed out that I should leave before it gets too late.

Micah… almost insisted that I should stay with him for the night. Or at least for a little longer and he’ll walk me back to my bus. If it weren’t for Manny’s warnings, I would have agreed to it. After all, Micah had been so nice to me the entire day and gave me so much of his undivided attention that I had no reason to distrust him. Which was why I was willing to let him do whatever it was he had done to me that day.

Well. Was it him being nice? Or was he being manipulative because he wanted something from me?

I should have known by the way he was so interested in my life, my personality, the intriguing way in which my brain operates. I thought he was fascinated because I am surely one of a kind in my disposition. But according to Manny, he was asking all these questions to get to know what kind of girl I am. And I pretty much had told him that I am insecure as hell, totally innocent, and a definite challenge.

Perhaps Micah likes challenges.

BUT — this is where it gets complicated.

Manny later informed me he had gone to have a man-to-man chat with Micah about me. Manny asked what’s the deal, what do you want from Mimi, I’m gonna put you in the hospital if you hurt her, etc. I was touched that Manny cared so much about my safety, but…

My life would have been much easier if Micah really had just wanted a one night stand. But it turned out he really liked me. REALLY liked me. And that freaked me out to no end because I don’t like him as more than a friend. I’m way too nice to outright reject him so I had to drop subtle hints the next time I visited. Uhh, more about that another time. -__-

Are the stars in some kind of bizarre arrangement right now? Where is all this sudden male attention coming from, really? I definitely prefer it when they ignored my existence. Or even viewed me as a friend and didn’t ponder anything beyond that. Back then, things made sense. They were supposed to ignore me because I made myself as inconspicuous as possible. You know me well by now, journal. After three years of #foreveralone stories and countless fruitless crushes and school dominating every aspect of my life, I end up at this point just a month after college started — a point where I don’t have time to write about school life at all because things like this are in the way. I am not bragging, honestly I’m not! D: Why would I brag about being so inexperienced that it’s a downright hazard to my safety? Before Micah, I had never even held hands with a guy. That’s just sad, okay? TT-TT

The weirdness had all started with best-guy-friend-material Benji, who was initially so taken by me that he actively pursued me through Cappa and Facebook, calling me words like beautiful and perfect and walking me back to my bus stop in the dead of night. After we decided we’re better off as friends, I don’t know what he thinks of me anymore but let’s not ask. I really think I scared him off once he got to know me. :P But yes. He started it all.

The Benji dilemma led me to reuniting with the boy-next-door Dathan, if initially only for advice. “If you want, you can always give me a try”? “I wouldn’t mind if you were my gf. I think you’d make a pretty cute girlfriend”? What’s up with the sudden change of heart in my childhood pal? I think it might be because he hates his college and he’s upset and he’s just looking for something familiar to hold on to. Hence, me. I don’t believe him when he says these things and so I won’t let anything happen, despite my huge crush on him.

Scene kid Micah I only knew for a day, and that only happened because he was so intrigued by my life… yeah, look how that ended up. >___> I had done things with him that I had never done before with people I’d known my entire life. Now he wants to get to know me better? I even asked him outright, “Why me? Why are you so interested even though I keep resisting?” He admitted that at first he thought I was pretty, but then he felt like he was attracted to me for some reason. Guess I was right in assuming he was drawn to how unusual my mind is.

And there is a fourth guy, did I forget to mention? Mhmm, Benji’s ultra-chill roommate, Manny. The occasional pot smoker and late-night drinker/partier who’s also a weirdly dedicated student trying to maintain a 4.0 GPA. I talk to him the most frequently out of all the guys. (Well, next to Dathan, who’s my go-to guy when I’m struggling with life.) I never thought I’d end up having this most sincere heart-to-heart with Manny for — three hours? Oh lord. o.O After a few minutes of him trying to convince me that I’m actually straight (dude, really?), he asked completely out of the blue if I would date him (to which I had cryptically answered, “I’m open to the idea,” because by this point I was sure something weird was going on in the heavens, and because I probably would -__-), and proceeded to inform me 3-4 times that he would, in fact, date me. It’s not a confession, but to think that he had considered it? WHAT?

This was 3 in the morning and he was probably fatigued as heck and didn’t know what he was saying.

WHAT IS GOING ON.

Like with Micah, I’m speculating that they’re all merely intrigued by the concept of me, that’s all. I’m like a mysterious character straight out of a novel: a girl who’s not once done anything with boys, who almost fears them, who appears normal on the outside while being viciously tortured by the monsters within her, and is desperately in need of someone to heal her but is too afraid to let anyone try.

But after three years of me writing in this journal, surely you’ve noticed my annoying tendency to put myself down. Argue that I’m dull and not deserving of anyone’s time and attention. Insist I have no worth as a human being. I swear, this is not some cry for attention or typical teenage emoing. This is how I genuinely feel, all the time. This is also what they call depression, my psychiatrist told me.

And that’s how my lengthy talk with Manny had gone. Three hours of that. It’s my automatic response to almost trash myself because I believe what I’m saying. It’s all I know how to do and so I continue doing it. And it only gets worse.

SIGH.

I don’t want anything else to happen between any of my guy friends and me. Hopefully if I keep resisting they’ll eventually lose interest in me? :/ But if I keep accepting their invitations to hang out every weekend, things are going to get complicated. Dathan wants to meet up soon to work on speech therapy. -___- And he already told me he thinks I’m pretty and that he’s willing to deal with my personality, two very dangerous combinations. Both Benji and Manny had invited me to a college party last Friday night to mother them after they drink themselves into a coma, and THEN sleep over for the night. o.O (I didn’t go to that, by the way, because of that infernal essay.)

Sharing a room with two intoxicated college boys? Yeah… pass.

I want to write an entry about how college itself is going (like stuff about my roommate and friends and how the work is and that time during my writing class when we discussed lolcat and internet memes) instead of focusing on these new and unfamiliar social experiences. Some time soon, I swear!

Until next time,

~ Mimi ;P

P.S. A 4.5k-word entry on boys and what I’ve been doing with them. What will my parents think of me, journal? D:

P.S. (part ii) After coming back from eating air-popped popcorn and tortilla chips in the kitchen, I was working on this entry while on the sofa in the first floor living room of my residence hall at 3 in the morning, sitting in the middle of two college friends:

• Eleanora, who loves Doctor Who and gives me a hug whenever she sees me and also likes both girls and boys and doesn’t mind when I go all lesbian on her and currently has fanfiction.net open on her laptop and is so freaking eccentric.
• and Elaina, who has read 300 yaoi manga (do that many even exist :O) and loves anime/manga in general and is giggling at whatever yaoi manga is open on her iPad at the moment and is my mental mirror twin in so many ways and understands me because she’s gone through it all and LITERALLY eats nothing but junk food and fruit and is so unpredictable with her moods but I love her anyway.

Moments like this make me feel like life is all right.

P.S.(part iii)/EDIT: What I imagined my first kiss being like:

• short
• sweet
• shy

What I did not imagine my first kiss being like:

• everything that actually happened

Ohlordohlordohlord. He KISSED me, journal, he did! And I kissed him back! When I went home and passed out on my bed for eleven hours and then woke up right before class, I had thought it was all a dream.

Then I looked in the mirror.

He was my first kiss but I feel like such a whore walking around with this hickey he left on my neck, even though I KNOW I’d never done anything like this before. >___< It’s much darker in real life too. Some people just think it’s a burn from a curling iron but my neighbor Coraline’s jaw dropped when she saw it because she immediately knew what it was. Asdfghjkl. Please go away before I return home for Thanksgiving or that reunion will not go well.

Oh? Which boy gave me the love bite? That will be a secret for now but he’s one of the ones from this entry~~

No, this isn’t me trying to be figurative or poetic or metaphoric; I was FORCED into the PSYCHIATRIC WARD of a nearby hospital for ONE WEEK.

They really didn’t do crap there to me, lol. But my school judged it unwise to let me continue on with classes the way I was, so it was necessary for them to physically pull me out for a week. Now they have me on medication and I’ll be attending regular therapy sessions and they’ll probably have people watching out for me here to make sure I don’t go into a relapse (if you can call it that) after being let back on campus. There was even talk of me possibly going on a medical leave, taking a year off and starting over next year. Oh God.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I was crazy.

But I’m okay now! I don’t have time to further explain because I just got back three hours ago, and I’m trying to figure out what I missed on campus and — especially — in fandom. Haha, priorities. :P I am a teenager and they dared to deprive a teenager of internet for a week. Ughhhhh there’s over 250 messages in my school email. D:

I have to pick up my medication at the town pharmacy so I’ll write more when I have time. :D Oh, the things I have to say about being imprisoned in the mental ward of a hospital!

Until next time,

~ Mimi :P

WHAT THE HELL NEWS WHYYYYYYYYY.

And we can’t even blame Johnny for this because Yamapi and Ryo made the decision to leave NEWS themselves. I hate that there will be gleeful fans who will be all in our faces with “I told you so,” and I feel bad for the other fans who put so much trust into NEWS that I can’t even imagine how hurt they must be right now. ;___;

I know that NEWS will likely be more active now that the two busiest members are out, but how will they fare now that the two most popular members are out?

I’m scared to see what’s gonna happen. :/

Why am I here I need to write this essay now gvejwgvdsbb.

EDIT: Boston boys invited me to a party tonight and I had sworn to never drink but damn, this would be a time to start. /inconsolable

Yeah. I admit that I had the song playing on loop for a good three hours. Not good, journal, not good. What if I become sick of it by the time my album comes? D: I just love the song and how Tegomass-y it sounds <3, though I wouldn’t say it’s a very strong song to use to promote the album to casual/non-fans. It think it might take others a little longer to get into it, or to like it at all.

The PV? All I can say is…

NEEDS MOAR EYELINER.

Haha, sorry, couldn’t help it. I do wonder why Tegoshi is wearing so much eye makeup, though. I was wearing pink eyeshadow and eyeliner last night (erm, more about that day in a future post -___-) and I’m not sure how it makes me feel to have Tegoshi do the same LOL. It’s a good thing I already like girls or else I would be quite confused over my feelings toward that guy; he really is too pretty in the PV!

His costume is interesting, that’s all I can say. :P Massu’s costume, on the other hand, looks awesome! More magician-like than Tegoshi’s, at least. The hat suits him. ^o^ Oh, and what Massu’s wearing the other half of the time:

He looks so good afaekgvjenalk. *___________*

I think they (especially Tegoshi) might have practiced swaying in the PV a little too much, because when it came time for their SCP guesting…

xD

Mahou no Melody has a very smooth, sway-inducing sound, I have to admit, but I couldn’t help giggling at how often that man kept swaying back and forth throughout the whole performance. It certainly kept me entertained. A lot of fans have expressed concern about how girly Tegoshi’s been acting lately. Well…

I just think it’s totally adorable!

Massu was perfect as always and all the fans I’ve heard from seem to agree. What else do you want me to say about him? He’s flawless! Both of them, their vocals were soooo good. And that collaboration? Oh man, that should have been included in the album! <3 Listening to them and seeing them perform made me see just how much I missed watching NEWS members. ;__;

So anyway.

Did you know that Massu and Nakamaru are going to star in a drama/infomercial thing soon? And I hear Massu’s character might be a flirt? Wheeee~

. . .

Current update: Sorry, journal, but Benji and I aren’t going anywhere in this relationship. Unless you count friendship as going somewhere? Anyway, HE AND I ARE NOT HAPPENING LIKE THAT.

Flashback: A group of guys heading home early from some on-campus parties a few weeks ago were eyeing me hard as I — struggling to walk in a straight line, eyes red, eyelids heavy as bricks — literally stumbled out of the bus at half past midnight with a boy’s jacket five sizes too big draped across my shoulders.

Uh, this looks bad, doesn’t it?

I CAN EXPLAIN.

Reddish eyes, hard to stay open: Fell asleep on the bus with contacts in. Eyes got irritated and dry and the sharp, cold, night air makes it uncomfortable to keep them open.

Struggling to walk like a normal person: Dead tireeeeeeeeed. It was 12:30 after being out all day, after all.

Stumbling out of the bus: It was dark. Tripped on the bus steps. :P

The boy’s jacket: Benji’s, of course~

He was taking the train with me back to the bus that goes to my college — because it was late and that’s a creep’s natural habitat and I would normally insist on doing things by myself but I really did not want to be alone there — and I was pretty obviously cold so he lent me his jacket.

I hung out with him and his friends again at a huge college event in Boston yesterday so I gave it back to him then.

Speaking of the city, I love how it’s only been a month and I’m already doing hordes of Things That My Parents Would Never Approve Of.  Like…

1. Lying about doing nothing but studying all day.*
2. Leaving campus.
3. Leaving campus and using public transportation by myself.
4. Leaving campus and using public transportation to get to the heart of Massachusetts, aka Boston.
5. Walking all around Boston with three other people, two of whom I’d met only once before.**
6. Getting even a hundred meters near the perimeter of Hempfest.***
7. Sitting on a bed in a dorm room with two guys, door left open.
8. Lying on a boy’s bed with the boy two feet from me at his computer, door closed and lights off.****
9. Using public transportation at midnight.*****

*Well, actually, that’s kind of true, haha. It is a ton of work but I’m not doing it 24/7 like Mama thinks I am. What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. ;)

Me (yesterday, waiting for a train at 9 at night with Benji and Manny): Asdfghjkl one missed call from my dad. D8
Me (10:30 that night after I got back): Oh, haha, what’s up, Old Man?…What? I missed your call?…Sorry, I fell asleep STUDYING SO HARD and didn’t hear the phone.

…Should anyone reading this become a parent in the future, DO NOT extremely restrict your child’s freedom or else they’re gonna end up like me. Sure, they’ll listen to you when they’re kids, but let them loose in college and… look at the bad person I’ve become. TT-TT

**September 17th’s Boston excursion involved Cappa, Benji, Manny, and myself. And one of Benji’s friends from high school joined us for a bit but mainly it was the four of us. Cappa was trying to make the thing seem like a double date because she was clearly flirting with Manny (even though she has a boyfriend, what?) and kept not-so-subtly shifting our walking arrangements so that Benji and I would always be walking side-by-side.

She’s one of the loveliest friends I’ve ever had. She’s also the most embarrassing friend I’ll likely ever make. Like, when she arrived after making us wait for her for 45 minutes, the first thing she did was hug me. Then she pulled back, looked at me, looked at Benji, looked at me again and saw me blushing hard because of what she was doing, placed her hand over her heart, and sighed, “Awww.”

Later, we passed by a section of sidewalk that, for some reason, had a gigantic impression of a footprint in it. Cappa quite literally pushed Benny into the footprint, shoved me against him, and forcibly took his arm and put it around me, all for commemorative photos of the event.

MORTIFYING. -///-

It does not help at all that a few of my friends kept “liking” the photos on Facebook. (I’m looking at you, girlie.)

***Hempfest. Exactly what it sounds like. A festival for lovers of marijuana. People want weed legalized like regular cigarettes are, so on that day there was a mass “protest” of pot smokers on this huuuuuuuge field in the heart of Boston.

So. Many. People. So. Much. Grass. (<— Haha, get it? :D :D) They were mostly college-aged kids looking to get high on the weekend. But seriously, there was so many of them taking drags at the same time that a thick, visible cloud of smoke hung over the entire area. I didn’t get close enough to really smell it, but I could detect a bit of an odd sweetness in the air. Benji’s roommate, who claims he’s not a drug addict but does smoke some joints once or twice a month, decided to go in for a bit while the rest of us headed off exploring.

Not gonna lie: I… kind of wanted to follow him in there. NOT TO SMOKE of course. Just to see what it was like. I was curious. :P

When Manny returned to us (and that took a while because he was a bit high and unintelligible and would not stay where we wanted him to stay) he was lot more giggly than usual and stumbled a lot. ^–^

Lol, how many slang terms for marijuana did I just use in the above section?

****The four of us were watching a movie in Benji and Manny’s room at night. Manny had to walk out somewhere and he didn’t want to get shot (this is Boston, guys Dx) so Cappa went with him, leaving Benji and me alone. In the dark. With the door closed.

Believe it or not, that’s the first time I’ve ever been left alone with a guy before. Benji is a nice guy, though, so I tried my best to push the anxiety down and focus on the film. I got through it fine, but…

It wasn’t even a very good movie. :/

*****I had to get back before the train/bus stopped running or else I would be stranded there. It wasn’t that late at night for a college student, but it was still late, about 11:00. Since I possess not an ounce of street smarts and the city can be dangerous and I get lost easily and when I’m scared I turn into this living target inviting bad people to jump me — Benji helped me find my way back.

Pfffffft, we got lost anyway. We ended up having to ask these two Japanese guys longboarding in the dead of night for directions. (I felt bad for eavesdropping on their conversations because I could kind of understand them.) Benji lent me his jacket because it was freezing and he has skin of steel apparently.

Parting ways… was awkward. I didn’t know if I should hug him or shake his hand or what, so I just waved like a derp and said goodbye. -///-

That was the end of that.

JOURNAL, it’s way too soon for this. I know all my friends have been cheering me on, but Benji and I don’t go that way. In fact, the two of us mutually decided over Facebook (not in person, God no D:) that we should remain strictly friends, since he’s not looking for a relationship right now (partially due to emotional scarring from his previous one, and probably partially because I’m being wicked difficult about things) and I am obviously not ready for such a commitment. Sorry for getting people’s hopes up with my last entry, but I’m honestly thrilled with these arrangements. :D I’ll write more about it when I’m done with midterms/essays/questions/problem sets/reading whole books in a few days, etc., but when I hung out with him yesterday with the mentality of “We’re just friends,” I was much happier and relaxed. So yeah. :D He’s still gonna be in my life, just… not in that way.

Although, Benji isn’t helping by continuously sending me messages and being slightly flirty and telling me I’m perfect and cute and WHAT THE HELL DOES HE WANT FROM ME ASDKJEGNGNDKF.

Don’t you see why all guys shouldn’t get involved with me?

I had my first and second therapy appointments a while ago. They were half-hour sessions of the counselor trying to get a feel of what’s going on. Initially the whole thing was arranged for me to get answers about why I’m so socially anxious, but the counselor decided to focus more on why I’d been getting randomly and gut-wrenchingly sad lately.

It’s apparently either a phase, clinical depression, or bipolar disorder.

I don’t think it’s any of those. :/ I certainly hope it’s not the last two. I’m sure it’s just the change of environment. Not worthy of checking myself into a hospital like the therapist insisted I do if this continues on.

Anyway! Let’s take a break from boy issues and mental problems and such. How about talking a bit about the fabulous world of college life, eh? I’ve been talking way too much about my life outside of campus.

Well.

This, this, and this = my life right now.

ALL RIGHT LET’S LEARN HALF A SEMESTER’S MATERIAL IN ONE NIGHT WOOT.

Save meeeeeeeeeeee.

Until next time,

~ Mimi D8

P.S. I never did go to that on-campus party because I was out all night with my Boston friends. Well, actually, there was still an hour and a half of the party left when I returned, but I was just too tired to head down and dance more. Parties here are organized by different student organizations, and this one was by the Korean Student Association. Which meant that they only played K-pop the entire night.

Er, huge J-pop fan here. I’ll pass. >__>

How would I react to that?

Allow me to tell you exactly how.

I vehemently deny it. I won’t believe it. In fact, I signed up for this college believing it would be like joining the convent. And I was fine with that, since a romantic relationship would complicate my college life even more. It’s been so long since I’ve last hung out with someone from the male species, and it’s been even longer since a guy showed interest in me beyond friendship. Or sometimes not even to the point of friendship, because I’m notoriously bad at opening up to boys.

He called me beautiful, journal. No boy has ever done that before. Not pretty, which I get sometimes (from girls) but still doubt whenever I look in the mirror. Not cute, which I get often but people also call pigs cute.

Beautiful.

Can you see how someone like me will just laugh it off as an April fools joke in September? In fact, I argued with Cappa on the phone for a good 15 minutes over whether she was just cruelly pulling my leg when she first told me everything in a euphoric, breathless rush, even though I know she would never do that to me.

Then some normal school things happened that night and the next day, and somehow this following exchange happened over Facebook chat:

Him: we definitely should! i have a pretty open schedule so yeah whenever you can !

Oh dear God did I just unconsciously asked him out on a date.

Hold on right there. I’m not making any sense. I’ll take this time to back up to how it all began, starting on Saturday, September 10, 2011.

College day at a place in Boston. Admittance with a college ID only, so the place was packed with college students and vendors advertising stuff. I came with two sophomores I met while walking to the bus that goes from my college to the train station, since I missed the earlier bus that most people took and I didn’t want to get hopelessly lost in the very city I grew up in.

I’d arranged to meet with Christa there, but she came late and instead I ran into Sheena, Mickie, and Angel! We exchanged hugs after not seeing each other since graduation, and Angel was so happy to see me that she hugged me a second time.

But this isn’t about them, since they’d been there long before me and were on their way out. After Christa arrived with her boyfriend and we walked around for a bit, we ran into Cappa and her college friends as we were about to leave~

More hugs and introductions, of course. I think Cappa had about 4 or 5  friends with her and I didn’t catch all of the names except for two, Manny and Benji, who are roommates at Christa’s college.

(Haha, I love how obvious my identity would be to my friends because I don’t even try with creative aliases anymore. :P)

The only word I can attribute to Manny is “cool.” He’s a cool guy, that’s all, and I mean that literally too. He has a very aloof demeanor, not once cracking a smile the whole time I was there. He’d even cross the street without using crosswalks or looking both ways. He radiated confidence, teetering on arrogance. I almost felt that he was unfriendly, but somehow I understood that he’s just like this naturally, so I didn’t feel too uncomfortable around him. I still kept my distance, though.

Benji was the polar opposite. He smiled constantly, was pretty loud and chatty, and kept recruiting people he recognized off the streets to join our group. He was very nice to me, though I didn’t talk to him much because, well, we only just met. Heck, it took me forever to get used to Cappa back in high school.

Anyway, Cappa invited me to hang out with her and her group of friends in the city for the day. I hesitated because the last bus back to campus was at 5 and I didn’t want to be stranded there. But I had been dying to see her since graduation and so I agreed, just for a bit.

We arrived at this shopping center place after an hour or so. That was when I told everyone I wanted to head off by myself for a while because I remembered I have some dorm shopping I had to do then.

Cappa is such a motherly friends and she would not let me off so easily, not without giving her my phone number first so I can call her when I’m done. She didn’t have her phone on her that day and so told me to give it to Benji instead.

So, basically she was asking me to call a stranger and bother everyone with the task of walking me aaaaaall the way to the train station.

Yeah, not gonna happen. -______- I even took out my phone, scrolled down to Benji’s name, and stared at the green call button for five minutes before letting my anxiety get the better of me.

I left without saying goodbye in person. I thought that was the end of it, done, I won’t see them ever again.

Then I got back to my dorm. Saw Benji’s Facebook friend request sent 6 minutes ago. Wondered about it but didn’t accept yet.

Cappa called right then. Asked me if I got home all right. Received my apologies for dashing off on my own.

Told me that Benji thinks I’m beautiful, wouldn’t stop talking about me, and desperately wants to meet me again.

I’m not lying when I say I nearly fainted right there.

I hadn’t an inkling back in Boston that Benji saw me as someone other than Cappa’s mute high school friend, so when I handed his phone back to him after putting my number in I had jokingly added,  “You can delete it after today. We probably won’t ever see each other after this, right?” In fact, I had been trying to remain as distant as possible because I assumed that day was a one-time thing. I could see myself falling for a nice guy like Benji and it would be bad if that happened but we never met again.

I’m scared out of my wits, journal. Mostly of rejection. When Benji first met me I was dolled up as best as I could, with a casually cute outfit (by my standards) and the necessary thousand layers of mascara it takes to fix my messed-up right eye, which I am extremely self-conscious about because the gods cursed me with ONE single lid and it makes my whole face wrong. He told Cappa he doesn’t care if I’m dressed up or in my typical running shorts/t-shirt, with or without makeup.

Sure, he says that now, but clearly this kid has yet to see me on a Monday morning.

We only hung out for an hour. Then I left without saying goodbye because I was too freaking scared to call. Even though I hardly opened my mouth the whole time and acted like the socially weird thing I am, I guess for Benji it was love at first sight. It must have been.

He’s been pursuing me for the past week through Facebook and I’m just sitting here wondering, “What’s wrong with him?”

I want to tell him he’s an idiot for getting himself into this. He’s so outgoing and friendly and talkative and easygoing and… perfect. He’s a complete social butterfly while I’m this awkward little caterpillar, just crawling along the underside of a branch and hoping people won’t see me and flick me off. He seems like a great guy and he seems to like me a lot, but he deserves someone better. I really can’t bear to expose him to my world, to the things that go on in my head, all the self-hate and uncertainty and words I can’t say because people just can’t understand.

I’m fan of the British TV show, Doctor Who. A newish fan, but a fan nonetheless. In the 10th episode of series 6, Amy says some lines that struck me as perfect for what I’m almost certain will happen.

You know when sometimes you meet someone and they’re so… beautiful… and then you actually talk to them and five minutes later they’re as dull as a brick. But then there’s other people and you meet them and you think, ‘Not bad, they’re okay.’ And then you get to know them and… and their face sort of… becomes them. Like their personality is written all over it. And they just… they turn into something so beautiful.

I said I was with Benji and his friends for only an hour. And since I didn’t talk to/look at anyone other than Cappa the whole time, doesn’t that mean he fell for my appearance? (Which in itself I find impossible to believe.) After our second meeting he’ll discover that he’ll get more out of talking to a pineapple and that will be the end of things.

And on MY side of things, what if it ends up like the second part of the quote? Truthfully, I don’t think Benji is nearly as physically gorgeous as, say, my writing prof Sergio, but he’s not unattractive by any means. His personality, though…

He’s beautiful inside. I see that. And I do like him somewhat. That’s how it usually is with me: if I fall for the personality, THEN the person becomes physically beautiful to me. Physical attraction is exactly what it sounds like — physical. Shallow. On the surface. It’s helpful for getting something started, but the personality is what really matters, and that’s why I’m terrified of all this.

I’m dull. It’s easier for me to loosen up here under the guise of this journal, but in real life, when I can see your face and your reactions and your eyes judging me picking me apart hating me please please don’t hate me please stop don’t look at me I CAN’T DO THIS—

The first time he sent me a message, I panicked and posted something unintelligible on his wall instead and quickly exited Facebook because I didn’t know how to keep a conversation going.

The second instance, I was already messaging Cappa at the time and I distinctly remember typing to her, “CRAP CRAP CRAP HE MESSAGED ME WHAT DO I DO HEEEELP. WAIT I SHOULD PROBABLY SAY HI FIRST.” She coached me through the 45-minute conversation and I guess she was messaging Benji simultaneously because she kept letting me know the cute bits of what he was telling her about me. She helped ease my nerves a bit, but I still spent the entire conversation blushing with a towel clutched to my face.

The third time, the two of us ended up talking for over two hours, stopping only because it was past midnight and Benji had an 8 o’clock class, that poor soul. I had spazzed out as usual when he initiated the conversation, but the more time I spent talking to him, the easier it became, until I realized with a jolt that by the end of the session, I was almost comfortable with him. Almost. Which is an accomplishment!

I could talk to him for only a short while the fourth time because I needed to work on a psychology paper. Of course, Cappa messaged me shortly after Benji did and I ended up talking to her much longer than I should have. It somehow turned into a counseling session from there, with me telling her basically all the woes I’m writing here. I didn’t realize that she was talking to Benji too until she told me to go do my essay, even though I hadn’t mentioned it to her.

Before I could sign off, she sent me a snippet of an exchange she’d just had with Benji, something that haunted me the ENTIRE TIME I was working on my essay:

he wrote me just now: i thought i was never gonna find someone …
and then i wrote: but you did and she’s beautiful
and he wrote: I KNOW

O_____________________________________O

Keep in mind that this is just one of many instances in which he said something of the sort. I really don’t understand what’s going on in his head. When he calls me pretty I don’t believe him. If he insists then I’ll believe him for a minute.

After that minute, I’ll go back to believing I’m God’s greatest screw-up.

It’s just UNREAL. How is this happening to me? Me, of all people. Ironic, isn’t it, that an issue like this comes up mere few weeks after I entered the supposed nunnery that is a women’s college.

Speaking of nunneries and people who believe my school is one (pfffffft NO), I was talking to The Pest over the phone and asked him if he thought Mama would prefer me as gay and single or straight with a boyfriend. He chose the former.

Oh man, if she ever finds out that I’ll be making the trip to Boston for a boy… oAo It’ll be the last time you see me, journal.

Even though Cappa insists it’s all happening, I’m not lying when I say I am unable to believe that Benji likes me as much as she claims he does. He’s on my mind more often than I’m willing to admit, and I just can’t imagine him doing the same. As nice as he is, that doesn’t change the fact that I still struggle to have faith in men.

But DAMMIT he’s slowly working to fix that.

He wanted to come here! To see me! I got really nervous about how that would go. Naturally. So I persuaded him to let me come to Boston instead, to which he agreed. So that will happen in a few hours, oh my God.

Oh, but it’s not just the two of us. No way. Benji can tell I’m emotionally fragile (or he heard it all from Cappa) and he asked me to join him with his other friends, including Cappa.

I didn’t get to message him yesterday because I lay down for a quick nap after a long week of school… and I woke up 3 hours ago at 2:30 in the morning instead. >___> Right now I’m typing this up while I wait for my hair to dry from my early morning shower. It’s about dry now so I should head to sleep or else I’m gonna pass out in a dead heap later. I have another party on campus tonight~

(Part of the reason why I won’t let Benji come here is that Cappa wanted to bring him to the dance. Um, not an environment I want to expose to Benji so soon. -///-)

I’ll be sure to update on what happens with Benji (and the party), although if you don’t hear from me after a week just assume it didn’t work out. D:

Ahhhhhhh, I’M SO SCARED.

Until next time,

~ Mimi o///o