#even though my grandpa is so grumpy 1 hater just like me :)

[strayloveletter]

i know that “do it out of spite” for academic achieving women is considered iconic but its so daunting. i’m hardly motivated and have the attention span of a goldfish but i’ve been trying to push myself anyway and have been barely making any progress (like 10% progress when 100% daily is like average) when i know i have the potential to do twice as much as the average person, or at least i used to. i don’t have much time left either. 

 i met the reason i’m doing it out of spite last week, my childhood bully. as she never openly admitted to anything she’d done and pretends to be just a childhood friend, we have a cordial relationship but anyone with a pair of eyes can sense the tension. she’s also a distant family friend, and though my family mainly cut contact with her’s after all the bullying and shit, i see her every couple of years or so. 

she got into USC. she’s probably going to become a doctor in the future. she and her sisters tried to pretend she got in straight after high school, but i know she transferred bc she took the exit exam sophomore year. USC isn’t child’s play. i know they look down on me for attempting to enter a uni out of the country even though its a quicker process and still challenging, but what if i don’t get in? they don’t know this but this is my second attempt. i got my diploma a year early and attempted the exam once before and missed by 8 points. 

i don’t know if my spite can fuel me any longer. what if my desire to end up better than the girl who ruined my entire childhood isn’t enough to motivate me into creating my success? i’ve always been obsessed with the perfect balance of revenge, evident in the many revenge-themed novels and comics i read and i’m not ready to accept the fact that thats rarely the case. people don’t get their perfect revenge. i was so sure it was real. whenever my dad would beat me, he would immediately face issues at work which would miraculously fix themselves once he’d apologized. people who’d say things about me behind my back would immediately bump into something or get hurt. maybe it’s the tiny things where god and the universe would be by my side, but will things work out where it really matters? i’m not so sure any more... i’ll never be better. i’ll never make her regret what she did. i’ll never make her wish she could turn back time and not isolate and bully the six year old who was so excited to see her family friend in a sea of unfamiliar faces at her new school until they were teenagers. 

the perfect balance was always so important to me. i was basically obsessed with it. i had the predisposed notion that if someone had an awful home life, they’d have an amazing social life. if they had an amazing home life AND an amazing social life, they probably had financial issues or weren’t too intelligent. but i had a shitty home life and an awful, lonely school life since i was like six. we were never poor and are well-off enough even to american standards today, but back then my parents saved every penny but i guess they never made us feel poor. i was very intelligent and fine health-wise, despite the chronic headaches that have only gotten worse. but back then, the main holy balance was either a good home life with parents who don’t hit or yell at you for trivial reasons and aren’t extremely fucking strict and a school life with no bullies or isolation and a bunch of fun unique friends who hung out all the time and even outside of school, whose groupchats are never dull. my dream was to have an average balance on the scale. kind, slightly neglectful parents that i had the luxury of missing and a couple friends i could trust. lol i was pretty naive. my parents are nice now but still incredibly strict. i don’t really have any friends at all, unless you count the passive kind that i still love but never really talk to. i’m also not a genius anymore.

i should be better now. i’m not bullied anymore. my household isn’t abusive anymore. heck, they even apologized. (yes, it’s a big deal. i never thought they’d do that) it’s been so, so many months since i’ve been slapped and they get me all the little things i want too. we’ve settled into the facade of the perfect family quite well :) but i still can’t seem to focus or learn. it’s like all my energy and excitement has been sucked away from me before i even had the chance to reach eighteen. i’m sure nobody’s actually reading this lol especially not up till here but i’m so so scared i’ll never get to be anything and will end up being an average person arranged to marry some average guy and raise his children while cursing myself and my bully and complaining to anyone who will spare a second to listen about how shitty my life is and how it’s not my fault but her’s. i really hope i won’t be forced to watch her live my dreams and think about how much of a failure i am forever. still, i can’t seem to push myself to do anything to change the trajectory of my life. i’n not going to fail and then blame others for it. i’m going to have to succeed and make her wish she was my friend. i’m going to live the life of my dreams idc. (iA)

 i’m going to study some more now