The Comical Life of Ava Karenina

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Here's looking at you, 2015

Whoa, the past two years have flown by. And yet, looking back on my last post, I hardly recognize myself. Who was that naive and pessimistic girl, lost in a sea of depression, grasping for a lifeboat of love and affection? I found my way. I built a happy life in New York City, living out my dream of adopting a dog and dating a wonderful man. I guess I wasn't living a nightmare after all.

Nevertheless, on the cusp of a new year, I still feel lost. I've battled against the raging tide of time and toil: witnessed mental illness and old age take a toll on my parents, alienated and practically disowned my father, outgrown my career and worst of all, muted my sense of self. I can feel myself transforming into an adult, one that is bitter, impatient, emotionless. It's not the person I want to be when I grow up.

And so, this 2015, I make only one resolution. The resolution of intention and change. The intention represents my resolve towards betterment, be it in my career, my attitude or my relationships. The change represents the actions taken towards this goal and the much-hoped-for progress.

It's a lot to swallow. My aspirations for change span every domain of my life, from learning a new language, to adopting a healthier lifestyle, to jumpstarting my career. I don't know how or when or whether I will accomplish these. But I know that I will try.

In that vein, I write here the guiding ethos by which I hope to live my life. These are the principles I hope to uphold in my journey towards change. They are not rules; rules carry with them an implicit sense of discipline and fear. They are my values, which, if upheld, should lead me towards a happier, more peaceful life:

Be kind and patient to those around me. My time is not more valuable than theirs. There's always time to listen, care and make someone's day better.
Don't live in fear of the new, the unknown or the risky. Know that I have the courage and confidence to face, if not tackle, every challenge that the day brings me.
Learn something new every day. Never stop learning. Never doubt my ability to learn.
Nurture relationships; don't let them wilt or grow apart. Reconnect with old friends and family. Remember the importance of having people in my life who I trust and value (and vice versa). Don't be an agoraphobe!
Appreciate the smaller things: a new recipe, a few kind words, a small victory. These add up.
Appreciate the bigger things that I've been taking for granted: a loving companion, a vibrant city, a stable job and supportive team.
My success is not lessened by that of people around me. It is, in fact, strengthened.
Home is where the heart is.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

2012

I am not a person of regrets. I don't think I had ever experienced regret in its profoundest form. That is, until January 1st, 2012. I woke up that morning in shock. In complete agony. In complete wonderment. It was that feeling when you wake up after living a nightmare. And you wonder whether the nightmare was your life or whether your life was just a nightmare. Could the last 3 months actually have happened? Could, by some great gift of kindness, the past 3 months have just been a nightmare? Could I change how Chapter 2011 ends in my book or had it been forever carved into a tapestry they call reality? There was no going back. I was living my nightmare.

In the past three months, I have lost respect for myself. I have drifted apart from friends and family alike. I have broken hearts, my own and others. I have made friends pretending to be someone I am not; I have lost friends being myself. I have become the person I always thought I wanted to be; and at the same time I have hated myself. I hate myself right now.

I feel so powerless. Like time is dragging my life, kicking and screaming, through phases that I have no control over. I don't want this year to end. I don't want a new year to start. I just want to "be" for a while. Have time wait for me to figure out what I want from life, if anything.

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Perfunctory

per·func·to·ry

adj \pər-ˈfəŋ(k)-t(ə-)rē\

Definition of PERFUNCTORY

: characterized by routine or superficiality : mechanical perfunctory smile>

: lacking in interest or enthusiasm

I absolutely love the word "perfunctory". I remember learning what it meant in preparation for my SAT exam and something about it just resonated with me. It has a real pretty ring to it. And it just sounds so sophisticated. So quirky. Because no one who did things perfunctorily would ever use such a word. The word itself is so un-perfunctory.

I absolutely hate all things perfunctory. I hate making small talk with acquaintances in an elevator. I hate going for dinner parties with people you despise only to make perfunctory conversation. I hate eating dinner together with my family EVERY NIGHT out of routine even though we have absolutely nothing to talk about and all we do is argue. I hate being perfunctory.

But in the end, that's exactly what I am. I am a creature of routine. I need to have junk food, a diet coke and a Friends rerun before I can go to bed. Even though I've seen all the episodes and can recite the script in my sleep. I cannot get on a flight without the most recent Glamor and Cosmo magazines safely in my purse. I do everything out of routine. And I hate it. I want my life to be quirky and fun and zesty. I want every day to be a new adventure and I don't want to know exactly what I'm going to do and when I'm going to do it. I want to take pleasure in the things I do rather than do them super efficiently just because I've done them like a gazillion times before. I can make my vodka sauce pasta in 20 minutes flat including cleanup and cutting time. It's because I've got it down to an art. Exactly when to cook what and what activities to do in parallel.

Parents, Shmarents

My parents have the strangest relationship. They aren't exactly divorced, but they are separated and live in two different countries. They don't really speak to each other or meet each other save for the times when they want to come visit the "kids" at one another's place. But they have started being a lot nicer to each other when they do meet. They sleep in the same bed (that's something that I haven't witnessed in many many years). They buy each other gifts. They get jealous when they hear of each other having a good time. It's strange. It's like they have enforced a long-distance relationship on themselves.

So if I'm being honest, I hate this. This whole short-term romantic memory syndrome that they seem to be suffering from. Just stop. It's weird and it makes their relationship seem so cheap and meaningless. Like it's based on nothing but just temporary loneliness. They need to get a divorce. There MUST be a way I can catalyze that.

If you're thinking that I'm the most callous person in the world for not wanting my parents to be happy, you clearly know NOTHING about my family. My parents are so wrong for each other. They bring out the worst in each other. Their one wish for me and my sister is that we don't end up like them EVER, in our marital life. They have done such terrible things to each other that I don't even want to open up that part of the Pandora's box in my mind to recount them right here right now. I mean I guess they weren't terrible but they were pretty absurd and dramatic. Like stopping a car on the middle of a highway and pushing their significant other out. Like storming out of the house drunk and driving away perilously. Like physical fights. Like being so angry that they drive with absurdly high BAC levels, 50 mph OVER the speed limit, with 5 other people IN THE DAMN CAR. Enough is enough. The saga that is my parents needs to end.

I'm just so angry at them. Why are they so stupid that they keep coming back to each other?! You would think that after putting their own and other lives in danger for the umpteenth time, you would realize that this just ain't working. And it's nothing to be proud of either. "We take our marriage vows seriously. We will continue on this path till death do us part." Yeah, even if the death is induced by each other. Purely idiotic.

When my mom moved out, I was sad, though. Sad for me. But happy for them. The house was just so empty and sad. I didn't ever want to come back to this house that I didn't even recognize. None of her makeshift hair dye messing up the bathroom sink. None of her perfumes to try on when she wasn't looking. But Polo took it the worst. He moped around for days and days, looking in every room for her. People say that Polo was one of those dogs incapable of selfless love, but he really loved her. Selfless or not. It almost seem inevitable that he would not be able to live in that big empty house without her. It was like a life sucking vortex of a house. Things just died there. And although I remember good memories in that house, none of them involve our entire family. We're like wassabi peas in a pod - you can't take us all at once. Or you literally die.

Bah, humbug

Nothing in my life ever turns out how I expect it to.

This stupid vacation was supposed to be my wonderful getaway from the crap that has been fall semester. And it was cancelled. I was supposed to have a fabulous new year's eve cocktail party with all my best friends but instead I will be entertaining one person, with sparkling cider and a sub par red velvet cake. I was supposed to be bonding with Rusty, my new puppy, but instead he has proceeded to treat my limbs as chew toys. I am pretty confident I have completely messed up his puppy training and that he will turn out to be as messed up as all the other members of our family.

Why does the universe continue to torture me like so. I do not have my luggage from the flight from hell so I am still wearing three days old underwear. Don't judge me. There are also absolutely no snacks in this stupid house and I am really finding it difficult to keep up with my daily routine of junk food binging.

BAH it's like I want this to end but there's no point in the future that I particularly want to fast-forward to.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Onset of the Jetlag

And now it is 6:47 a.m. Having made several futile attempts to watch some Friends reruns online to pass the time, I had to resort to paying iTunes for my television addiction. Correction: television-with-junk-food obsession. Unfortunately, the junk food is far from reach at this point because the kitchen is being guarded by my dad's new puppy Rusty. By guarded, I mean monitored by the cute little monstrosity of a dog. Every time I try to get some food, Rusty threatens to bark and wake up the entire household. Lovely.

All I can think about is that stupid Zach Efron movie I watched on the flight. I want Charlie St. Cloud to make love to me after I die too! PS, I just ruined that movie for the few readers of this blog who like romantic comedies but would have been asleep or brain-dead for so much of this movie that they cannot guess the ending 30 minutes into it. As much as I love romantic comedies, there's always this part of the movie that makes you want to rip your arm off just so that you can throw something at the screen. In this movie, it was when Charlie gently kisses Tess's shoulder from behind. I could tell that it probably felt like being kissed by a humingbird or something. Ah, I haven't felt anything like that for over a year. Yes, people, I have been living a life devoid of any semblance of a human relationship for quite some time now. I don't even hug people. In fact, I avoid hugs at all costs. And being kissed, well that's just out of the question. Ever since my ex, let's call him Perry, broke up with me, it feels like he didn't just end our relationship, but he ended my entire romanticized conception of love. He made me not believe in love and soul mates and all that crap that Hallmark overcharges you for.

But that's not to say that I haven't thought about other men, recently. There's been a string of unattainable men that I have chosen to pine over and feed my depression with. To be honest, I can't see myself with any of them. I just hate the idea of being alone. I scares me so much. So I think on some level, I make these men out to be more than they really are just so that I can tell myself that there's some hope out there. That being single in your twenties is not some terminal disease that is going to stay with me till my deathbed. I KID. I don't NEED a man. I just need some company.

Chapter 1

Hello everyone,

Let's jump right into the first chapter of my adult life.

It's 4:30 a.m. and I decided to create a blog. It was not an impulsive decision - impulsive decisions are not me at all. Instead, I prefer to mull over things until they sound better in my head than they would in practice. This was the case with this blog. If you are reading this, you are probably more bored than I am right now and could probably use a little humor in your life. And I shall step up to challenge. I find most things that happen to me pretty funny. I mean, I spent the first 20 years of my life thinking that my life was pathetic and depressing. But then I started to look at my life as though it were a stranger's life on a TV sitcom or something. And you really start to see the humor in things.

I'm in my senior year of college. You could probably sum up my entire college life in a blog post. A boring one at that. But I shall spare you. I won't be modest here - I'm a smart kid. I've had a 4.0 GPA since I was a freshman and I study at an Ivy League school. That pretty much leaves time for zilch in my life. But I kind of did well - had a steady boyfriend for 3 years, a great group of cute friends whose virtuousness put Barney to shame. Not bad to look at either.

Everything sort of fell apart about 6 months ago. My boyfriend dumped me, my parents got divorced. My adorable sausage dog passed away (Polo literally was the only member of my family who I could stand for extended periods of time). My GPA sort of went downhill. I spent the last semester literally eating cookie dough in my room, watching Katherine Heigl movies to drown out the pain. And some strange antidepressants, too. I was just coasting. "Coasting" is a term that I have sort of adopted as my own and defined to be what I consider myself to have been doing for the past 6 months. Doing whatever it is that will keep me afloat. Not really caring about anything or having any sort of drive. Just going with the flow and surviving.

So what brought on this blog? Well, 2011 begins in 2 days. I am stuck in a gigantic house with my dad after what could possibly be the worst vacation EVER. I had planned out this amazing trip to Florida with my high school BFFs. But the blizzard in NYC sort of killed those plans. What's more, I ended up stuck somewhere in rural Brooklyn outside a broken down cab, knees deep in snow. Wearing Florida clothes. Nothing but 50 bucks and a dying cell phone in my pocket. It was pretty awful. When I finally got back to my sister's apartment in New York, (after dragging an 80 pound suitcase through a blizzard for 30 blocks in Brooklyn from one closed down subway station to the next), I realize that I have to spend the next 72 hours in close quarters with my family. What a perfect way to end an already miserable vacation.

A couple of things you should know about my family:

1- if we are all in the same room for more than 4 hours, the universe WILL implode.

2- my sister has extreme rage issues. She swings from extremes of emotion and is generally an extremely volatile person. She hates my parents and generally resents them for everything.

3- my dad is a variant of my sister. He's much more sensitive about everything. He loves us, I know, but he spends every day thinking of ways to make us better. At everything. He is the king of micro management and he will drive you crazy if he takes a liking to you. If he doesn't, you're probably screwed too.

4- my mom loved Polo, our dog, much more than she ever loved us. That's possibly the only thing I am certain of about her. She's depressed after thirty years of a failed marriage to my dad. She's the sweetest person deep down, but she has trouble expressing any sort of emotion at all. She will consciously choose to like anything my dad dislikes and hate anything that he doesn't. Which makes her relationship with us extremely complicated and in flux.

5- Me, I'm what people call the "normal one". But that's only because I have definitely perfected the art of repression. I hate confrontation and when my family gets at it, I generally zone things out. But I have 21 years of bad memories locked up somewhere and my biggest fear is when that Pandora's box is going to spring open and bite me in the ass.

So this blog is my way of giving myself a breather from the whirlwind that is my life. A way to sort of sit back and write about my days as though they aren't actually happening to me. So that I can sit back and say "haha, that girl is so fucked."