the guinea pig syndrome

Warning: this a post that's pretty much me just being whiny. Regardless...it's something that's been on my mind, and what better place to get it out than here?

Basically, long story short: my sister's in her last year of high school and has applied to a bunch of colleges and universities across the country...and (touch wood) she's gotten into SO many of them! She got her applications out really early, which probably helped considering she wants to do nursing. She's even got a lot of decent scholarships too from pretty good schools. 

I'm ashamed to even put this out there to be honest. I'm tremendously proud of my sister - I honestly never thought she'd work this hard and be so dedicated and end up having so many good options - and really I am so glad for her. But...there's a part of me I suppose that feels a bit wistful, a bit wishful, a bit envious. My senior year/college application experience was frankly horribly stressful and anxiety inducing to put it mildly. Being the eldest child in a family who had no experience with applying to US universities and riding on high hopes of being accepted into most of the the US News and World Report top 20 ranked undergraduate schools that I'd applied to, I sort of went in blindly. I mean, my parents did too, we had no clue what colleges were looking for. The fact that my peers were all applying to extremely well-ranked programs sort of led me to want that as well, otherwise I would've considered myself a disappointment and embarrassment. My grades were fairly good - I had a 4.2 GPA overall, I aced certain classes and did alright in others - and I mean...I had what I thought was decent volunteering/internship experience (most of them hospital or medical private practice related). I was involved in a couple of clubs although I wasn't a leader, but I'd been playing piano since I was four and did well in competitions. I thought I was a pretty good candidate for the schools I was applying for - Brown was a far reach school, but Emory, Rice (my ED school), Georgetown, William & Mary, amongst others - these were mostly schools I thought I had a good shot of being accepted into. and with the exception of 1 or 2 (which I got waitlisted for), every single one rejected me. And I think a big reason for this (besides just having way too high expectations of myself) was because we were literally going in blind. I was the guinea pig child - the eldest, carrying a lot of expectation and weight on my shoulders, the one who ended up being burned and making choices that weren't the best for me. My sister gets the benefit of seeing my mistakes and knowing where to apply to, what to expect, how much more volunteering hours she'd need, etc. My parents have the benefit of fixing their mistakes, looking back at their experience with me and changing things to make sure my sister has it better. 

I don't want to make this a pity party, and it's really not. Honestly, if I had been accepted to Rice's Early Decision program, I never would have even applied to UofT (where I'm studying right now!). I guess life works out in mysterious ways? Well, that's what I tell myself. I'm happy where I'm at, it's just that I still feel completely lost. I have rough ideas of where I want to go, where I'd LIKE to go in a fantasy sort of utopian world where I wouldn't have to worry about money or security or getting a job at all. But I still feel so lost...and it's strange to me that I, who pretty much since I was 5 KNEW (or thought I knew) what I wanted to do - I had a fucking plan all set out and nothing would derail me from it - and now I'm so restless and lost and unsure and insecure about everything in life. I don't know where to go, hell I even meet a "life coach" now because I HAVE NO DIRECTION OF MY OWN. Like...how sad is that? how pathetic is that? maybe it's not, but I feel like such a failure and a let down. 

Meanwhile my sister - the one who nobody ever really thought had a direction in life, who wasn't really the academic one - she's doing so damn well. and I'm so proud and happy for her, because she doesn't have to go through what I went through in my last year of high school and she won't have to go through this horrible listless feeling that I have now when she's in college. She'll have a path, she'll know what she wants and how to get it and I'm so proud yet so envious. Sometimes I wish I just put my head down and studied what my parents wanted me to or did something banal yet with job security in the future instead of sticking to what I think I love. I most definitely wish sometimes that I could turn back time and tell myself what and what not to do when applying for schools. I mean...I like where I am, but I also know things could've been different I guess. I just don't want to have regrets when I grow older I suppose. 

she can't see the landscape anymore, it's all painted in her grief...

I suppose people will wonder: what the hell does a 19 year old girl, raised in an upper-middle class life of decent privilege, know of grief? and I guess in a way, I ask myself this everyday. I've always thought too about how much of a contradiction I am - straddling the line between Desi and American, juggling my need for solitude and my want for social interaction, torn between my desire to be loved and respected and my blatant fear of putting myself out there. Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe I see myself differently than the way others do, maybe I put too much stock in the fact that I'm a Gemini born in the Chinese year of the dog. Applying characteristics to myself for so long that habit has no become ingrained qualities. Adhering to the story fate and the stars apparently are said to tell just because it's easier that way, easier to be a passive onlooker in my own life than to be actively grabbing life by its' horns and steering it the way I want it to.

There's no rhyme or reason to my emotions - no explanation other than a malfunction in neurological chemistry that's shaped me into becoming this strange sad jumbled mess of a young woman. Although that sounds like the description of a protagonist from a popular YA novel - and as much as I wish sometimes that I could escape real life through the fiction and media I consume, I know it's not possible. I'm not some girl crafted by John Green's vision, I'm not a bunch of words someone put to a page that people will read and imagine and sigh in longing for and then hope for a happily ever after. I'm just...me. Anissa. I'm real, made of flesh and blood, trying to subsist off of my own imagination, wildly inaccurate dreams that I'm just now realizing will never come true. No one will come sweep me off my feet, love and relationships and money and jobs and success and happiness are things that I've lived with just expecting to come to me some day. "Some day!" It's funny now when I think about it. I used to console myself with the idea that everything I wish I had would magically come find me in the future, would suddenly appear to me and that would make me happy. I was wrong, and I've only just figured this out within the last year or so.

Ignorance is definitely bliss; turning a blind eye to the real world with those outlandish fairytale dreams in my mind were the only thing keeping me going through my life so far. Yet it caused harm too - just now I've been dumped in the real world where people have to WORK for the things they want, where people need to be pushy and outgoing and confident with their "I don't give a fuck!" attitudes. And I've spent so much time retreating into my own shell that at this point, when I'm lost in life regarding what I want and how to go about getting it, I'm not even sure if I'll be able to change myself and the way I view myself for the better.

(Regardless, this has been an introductory post to my blog. I'll continue on this subject again in the future, adding more and clarifying things, probably going deeper into specific issues. I'm hoping that writing about myself in this truly open manner will help jumpstart other creative juices so that I can work on some original fiction ideas. Even if that doesn't happen, I write this in hopes that maybe by pouring out what's going on inside of me, I can potentially figure out and fix my own issues.)