Jendependence

For the millionth time, I am retiring this blog and starting a new one. I know I have done this so many times but I just had to do it! I have such a good name for my new blog... you guessed it.

JENDEPENDENCE

:)

See you at my new blog!

Rough Weekend

This weekend was rough. It was my not-cousin's birthday and I knew that she was having a party. I was sure that most of the people that she invited to the party were people she met with through me. I didn't want to know what day her party was on so that I wouldn't focus on it that night. But just knowing that was going on this past weekend brought me down.

On Saturday, I was at Tito's telling my mom how I had recently felt like I was going backwards. I had had two dreams this past week with my not-cousin and the ex in it and that upset me. While we were walking to the parking lot, guess who I see on the road waiting to turn left onto Sepulveda. My not-cousin. The huge stupid Bob Marley sticker on the back of her car was quite visible and made her car unmistakable. Great. Just what I needed.

Then I get home and I proceeded to call back a friend that had called me earlier in the day. He never calls so I wondered what it was regarding. He texted me back and said that my cousin had texted him about her bday party that night and he was wondering if I was going. Great. Inadvertently, I was now aware of when her party was scheduled. To be fair, this friend didn't know about what happened. But it still sucked. I wanted to be unconscious as soon as possible so I immediately got ready for bed and went to sleep at 9 on a Saturday night.

I hate that my not-cousin's life is just going on normally. She's happy with my ex-boyfriend and my ex-friends and celebrating her life, while I am struggling to put mine back together. She obviously has no shame because most of her guests were people that she met through me, including peripheral friends like the guy that called me to see if I was going who didn't even know about what happened. (Oh and by the way, she made out with this friend of mine a couple times while we were out because that's the kind of girl she is.) She only has this happy life now BECAUSE OF ME. I feel completely used and disrespected. And it makes me so angry to think of her just being fine. It's like she got off scot free while I am having to use every ounce of strength I have to be fine and to persevere through the challenge that has been created for me by her actions. I'm willing to bet money that she doesn't think about me nearly as much as I think about her and the ex. The only consequence that she had to pay was losing me and my family, but it wasn't really a punishment because she didn't give a shit about us. All that mattered to her was herself and getting what she wanted, whatever the cost. And that makes her pathetic. But despite knowing what a crappy person she is, I still can't help but feel hurt. She was my cousin, my family and she betrayed that bond.

I have been doing better and I know I will come out of this struggle better than ever, but it is still a struggle. Some days are better than others. And these last few days have been hard. I'm glad the weekend is over and I'm happy to be going to work tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to push my thoughts of them out of my head so I can focus on me because that is the only thing I should be worried about right now.

New House Slippers

I'm all set for winter!

100 Books

I did this once before on Facebook awhile back. Angela just posted it recently so I thought I would try again! Maybe it will motivate me to get back into reading. I haven't finished reading a book in so long. :(

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Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses!

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read 26! Good job me! Way to be relatively well-read according to the BBC!

Take That Blue!

So this convo pretty much sums up how I'm doing now... :)

Angela: jmiyo

what did u cook

me: chicken with broc, tomato, and onions

and rice

it was good!

and i had a nice time with my roomie

she's great

Angela: Yay good things

me: yes!!!!!!!!!!! man i feel fantastic!!!

Angela: i like this jen

me: me too, i have to remember this so when i'm feeling blue, i can pull this out of my ass and be like take that blue!!! fuck off!

The Gift of Betrayal

Despite all of the hurt and pain I feel from this horrendous double betrayal, there is one gift that I have received as a result of this incident. I am utterly grateful and appreciative of everyone who has supported me during this difficult time. I know that I have friends and family that love me, I have always known this, but to really see it in action was a blessing. I never want to take it for granted again.

Before this episode, I kept saying that I didn't have any friends because I had to distance myself from the group of people that I had hung out with for the last two years. I did so because they were all friends with my ex too and I had to get over him so I had to remove myself completely. I felt lonely and it was really hard. But when this terrible incident happened this weekend, the people that were calling me were not the group of friends I missed. They were the ones that live in DC, Ohio, Chicago, Canada, and England. They were the ones that answered the phone at 6:30 in the morning because I was having a breakdown. They were the ones that noticed when I fell off the grid and made an effort to still hang out with me. They were the ones that I hadn't seen in months but still showed up at my door with cupcakes and a shoulder to cry on. They were the ones that continued to check on me everyday to see how I was doing. I have the best friends anyone could ever ask for and I just wish there was some way for me to better express my gratitude.

And my family... we have never been a very close family but I know that when it really counts, when I really need them, they are there for me. They were so concerned for my well being and safety and just wanted to make sure I was okay. They made every phone call necessary to get the help I needed. They sat with me and just held me while I cried. They kept me company all day on Monday while I tried to recover from the shock. They prepared food for me and tried to get me to eat. They even made sure that I took care of the bare necessities like washing my hair and brushing my teeth. They looked after me when I couldn't.

Without all of this support, I don't know what would have happened to me. I am feeling better today and even though I know this is going to be a long healing process and that I will have good days and bad days, I feel like I can get through this now. I want to get better not only for myself, but for each and everyone of these people that love and care for me and just want to see me happy. They give me the strength to feel like I can do anything. And I am not going to let two people who know nothing about compassion, loyalty, and love get in my way any longer.

Betrayal

I have never been so betrayed in my life. In my anger, I wrote this email that I wanted to send to everyone. I wanted to send it to all of our friends and to Nick and Erin's families too. I wanted everyone to know the details so that they can understand the magnitude of this betrayal. I wanted Nick's parents to know that this is the kind of son they raised and I wanted Erin's family to know what she has done to her cousin and good friend. I wanted to speak out so that people can judge them and shame them. I wanted everyone to know what kind of disgusting people they are. In the end, I didn't send it. And I'm glad I didn't. I have integrity and I am a much better person than this.

But of course, I can post it on my blog! No one reads this thing anyway...

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I'm sorry to drag all of you into my mess but I just needed to make you all aware of the kind of company you keep, if you continue to be friends with Erin and Nick.

As you all know, Nick and I dated and then we broke up. Over the last year, we have been on and off. This last time around during the summer, he went to Italy. When he came back, he told me that he missed me in Italy and thought about me everyday. He told me that he realized that he broke up with me for no reason and that he was thinking that he wanted us to get back together. I told him I was willing to discuss this with him and so for the next two or three weeks, we entertained the idea. Things were going really well and then I went on vacation for my birthday. He picked me up from the airport when I got back and proceeded to tell me that he couldn't do it. He told me that he had already put me through so much that he was selfish in asking me to get back together. He said that I wasn't just some girl, I was Jen Miyoshi. He said that he couldn't get back together with me because he could not risk hurting me ever again.

I was devastated by this. I never wanted us to break up in the first place and I wanted us to get back together. He knew this. So for him to tell me that he wanted to get back together and then for him to take it all away was the cruelest thing he could have done to me, or so I thought.

Erin is my cousin. She and I had gotten really close over the last year because we were both going through difficult breakups. We were there for each other every step of the way. I shared with her every thought I had about Nick and my pain and hurt. She knew how devastated I was this summer when Nick so cruelly asked me to get back together and then couldn't follow through in the end. She comforted me. She was one of my best friends.

After this incident with Nick, I finally decided that I could no longer hang out with the group. It was just too painful for me to be around Nick and everyone and be reminded of all the fun times we had together. I was really sad to have to separate myself from the group because they were my friends too but I knew I had to do what was best for me. And so I entered a self-imposed isolation.

For the last three months, I have been doing better. Everyday was a struggle but I was getting through it. This past weekend I suspected that Erin and Nick were sleeping together. This was unimaginable to me considering my relationship with them. I asked both of them and they both told me to my face that they were not. Erin said she would never do that to me and when she found out that I was still having a hard time, she asked me if there was anything she could do for me. I was still suspicious and so I sought out the truth and I discovered that they have been dating for a month already and that they want to be in a relationship.

I have never been so betrayed in my life. I asked Erin how she would feel if I did this to her, if I was dating her ex, and she said she would feel the same way and she knows that I would NEVER do that to her. I asked Nick how he could tell me that he couldn't follow through this summer because he couldn't risk hurting me ever again and then do something like this and he told me that it's not black and white. They both told me how sorry they were and that they felt horrible. But when I asked if they were going to pursue the relationship, they both said yes.

I am disgusted by their selfish behavior and I have never been so hurt. These were two people that I loved and cared about greatly. I was always a good friend to them and I would never do anything to hurt either one of them. I trusted them and I never imagined that they would be capable of doing something like this to someone they both care about. I can't even put into words how destroyed I am right now.