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Above is a poem I wrote for my creative writing class. I’ve never really written poetry before, unless you count the assignments in elementary and middle school (I don’t). I have to turn in a portfolio of my writing as the final, and one of the requirements is that I publish my work and get feedback from people outside of the class. So, if you have any thoughts about the piece, tell me what they are! Besides the fact that I need to take a screenshot to prove that other people read my work, I’m also curious as to what you guys think. All opinions are welcome! (srsly)

Days 3-7

Day 8

•  carrot + avocado (doesn’t juice well) + asparagus + celery + cucumber + tomato + apple + pomegranate + berries (raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries)
• 3 small bowls of fruit
• 3 bowls of salad + spriluna + sunflower seeds
• 2 bananas
• 1 avocado

Ate a bit too much for my liking today… I did a 15 minute ab workout with… Let’s call her Barry. She’s actually the uber awesome one I mentioned earlier. I went into her bedroom late at night yesterday and talked to her about my insecurities about my body image. She’s the president of the body beautiful club so I thought hey, maybe I could talk to her. An amazing thing happened. She opened up to me about her insecurities too, gave me advice, and told me some of the kindest words I’ve heard in a while. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I embraced her.

Day 9

• Same juice from day 8: carrot + avocado (doesn’t juice well) + asparagus + celery + cucumber + tomato + apple + pomegranate + berries (raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries)
• My diet wasn’t recorded

I had a breakdown yesterday night. I talked to Barry, my roomates and two seniors next door. They comforted me and let me know that people do actually care about me.

Day 10

• pineapple, blueberries, strawberries, carrot, asparagus, celery, cucumber, apple, bannana… almost every basic fruit in America. We wanted to go out with a bang on the last day.
•  Avocado with butter. I started adding grass-fed organic butter on the last days because I was worried that my emotional state possibly had to do with loss of critical nutrients. Don’t remember what else I ate… probably a variation of food on the other days in the fast.

Skipped my first 2 morning classes and went to the guidance counselor. A floodgate of emotion washed over me as I talked about deep rooted family issues and insecurities. I realized that my beliefs stemming from these traumatic events were still overriding my life. They colored my every move, every moment without me even aware. I hadn’t talked to my family that week or done anything related to them in particular. The emotions about them just whipped out of me.

I didn’t update this fast for a while afterwards because I was extremely busy at the time with my classes, extra schoolwork from the missed clases, and activities while trying to deal with the tsunami of deep-rooted emotional trauma that burst out from the gates of hell. I needed time to figure things out… and try to somewhat hold my composure because, sadly, I couldn’t just drop everything and leave to deal with my emotions. After talking to my counselor, I went to take a much needed nap. When you sleep, your body heals and repairs itself… I could definitely feel that during my rest, my cells had started healing and restored themselves when I woke up.

As for my partner in juice cleansing… from what I know she definitely didn’t have as hard of a time as me. She enjoyed it very much so, but broke the fast on day 9 after being offered free, quality err cheese and stuff.

So theories:

I’m someone who’s very in touch with my emotions and much more sensitive to them because I try to bring them out as much as I can and love them for what they are instead of continually repressing them deep down inside. In the process of clearing my body of waste and debris floating around, the juice cleanse also tried to clean out my cells of the emotional toxicity weighing them down. I became utterly flabbergasted as my whole demeanor became so emotionally touchy, sad, and depressed. Perhaps my reactions to the events that took place during that time is how I actually still feel deep, deep down inside, I just tend to feel them as surface emotions because my body has to protect me from reacting with extreme emotions as I need to function in everyday life.

But, this event brought to my attention an extremely painful emotional hotspot I’ve haven’t completely cleared out. So, another opportunity to grow.

For the first time, I tackled my emotional problems with the people around me. My friends, my guidance counselor. As hard as it was for me, my counselor kept pounding me with questions until we got to the emotional backbone of it all. All of those irrational beliefs picked up as a child, she completely dismantled them. She told me it wasn’t my fault. The night before, my friends told me how much I meant to them, how much they loved me, and that I wasn’t worthless. It’s amazing how much love and support you can receive if you only reach out to the people around you. It is scary though. Trusting them and letting them into your world, your most vulnerable state. But maybe, it can be worth it.

I took part in AjiaFest with 2 acts, tinikling and breakdance. Tiniking is a Traditional Filipino dance that involves hopping to and fro inbetween 2 bamboo sticks.

No, breakdance isn’t really asian but it’s always in AjiaFest and contains a good number of asian members. After I got back from Christmas break, my life got taken over and swallowed by AjiaFest. For 2 weeks I had no life. I had barely any time for eating, homework. I would practice for my 2 acts immediately after school for maybe 6 hours or so. My tiniking captains also finished the choreography during the very week of the show, giving me very limited time to practice -.- The choreography for the modern section was baller though and ‘meant to look impossible’.

If you want to see me, I start at 1:22 in the all purple outfit. If you’re bored would recommend to start watching at 3:14 for pure amazingness. It’s the shit!!! No, seriously and really, you have to see the ending. The part through the sticks had my friends messing up every practice. If you do one wrong move, everyone is thrown off. They successfully went through the end only a couple of times right before our performance. My captains are brilliant geniuses (and good senior friends who both happen to live on my hall). Me, along with the girl I was dancing with in the blue, are going to be the captains together next year.

Here’s the Breakdance video. I’m in the beginning, boy/girl pairing, and very end.

*spelled incorrectly purposefully

In that moment you breathe a deep sigh of relief.

Because somewhere, deep down inside, you didn’t believe it.

So, I just wanted to tell you guys that I freakin’ got LOCAL, ORGANIC food in the cafeteria. ME. We had a health and wellness picnic where the bulk of the the food was fresh from the local farmer’s market. The pasta was from Whole Foods. I got called into the back of the cafeteria kitchen where I was asked to make up the menu off the top of my head.

Menu

• Grilled Chicken w/Peaches and Chipotle
• Vegetarian Pasta
• Green Beans with Sautéed Fried Beef
• Sweet potato Fries w/Cheese
• Butternut Squash
• Assorted Breads
• Strawberry Medley Mix of Fruit

It was a part of a Mini-term project. What’s mini-term? A 10 day period where we had no classes and got the chance to pick an “educational” project on campus or travel abroad. I decided to stay on campus this year and I picked the project “Farm to Fork.” It was all about eating local foods (yum yum in my tum tum) and learning about sustainable agriculture by taking field trips to an urban homestad, local farms, the local farmer’s marker, and listening to guest speakers.

We were required to work on a project that helps provide greater access to local foods for our students who don’t have a lot of time, don’t have cars, and not allowed much more than a microwave. On a whim, I suggested we incorporate a main local food ingredient in vegetarian and meat entrees in the cafeteria once a month. Then, I got assigned that as my project. I talked it over with the symbolic, overbearing authority figure whom no one likes, known as Mrs.B and quickly got it approved with a date and everything… That was easy.

The food was amazing and I realized how much of a difference you can taste with fresh food grown with love in nutritionally dense soil compared to chemically over processed vegetables.

The advertising for the event was poor, with most students unaware that the delicious food was locally grown. After spring break, I’ll be speaking with the Mrs.B even more, finding the most cost effective ways to incorporate local foods into the cafeteria. I choose initiating change there because that’s where it’s most effective, even if we were to only to tweak little things. Purchasing local foods would cost about the same as conventionally grown ones if they are in season. If it works out well, who knows? It could happen more than once a month.

So, yeah, I did that.

Avocado Wonderland

Ingredients

• 1 avocado
• Sea salt
• Turmeric
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Cayenne pepper
•  Spriluna

Mix all of the spices together. Eyeball it, and taste test until desired result. Cut the avocado in half, sprinkle the spices and spriluna on and dig in with a spoon!

I ate this every morning for breakfast back at home. I haven’t eaten it at school since I ran out of spices… After bringing turmeric and cayenne pepper back after spring break, I’ll surely be eating this again.

The avocado is such an easy, convenient, erm, fruit… vegetable. I’m going to go with vegetable just because it seems more like a veggie than a fruit.

Anyways, it’s loaded with fiber, potassium, and vitamins C, and K. One whole avocado contains more than 1/3 of our daily value of vitamin C. Yes, I just googled that because I didn’t actually know what exactly is so healthy about an avocado other than the fact that it contains loads of healthy fats.

People, don’t be scared of fats! Big pharma has conned people into believing we should be avoiding fats like the plague. So what have we loaded up on instead? Refined sugar and loads of carbs mixed with artificial flavors and advertised low amounts of hydrogenated fats. Whoo! As you can clearly see, it’s really been working out for Americans.

Sea salt is so much more flavorful than iodized salt and less processed, with trace some minerals. It may be more expensive, but you’ll need less because it is more potent (and better tasting!). Iodized salt is dried sodium chloride with anti-caking agents such as aluminum (mined using toxic chemicals like sulfuric acid and strongly linked to a cause of Alzheimer’s)

Tumeric is used in many Indian recipes and great for your blood. It is aids in liver detoxification and aids with metabolism.

Cayenne pepper stimulates digestion.

Spriluna is an edible algae and green superfood that provides lots of easily digestible protein, iron, vitamin B-12, beta carotene, and amino acids.

I buy mine from the RawFoodWorld.com in the largest size and sprinkle it on almost everything I eat. It’s one of those foods that I use as a “backup” for a bundle of nutrients because my cafeteria definitely cooks all of the nutrients from its already overprocessed, conventional factory farmed foods.

Since I ran out of spices, I’ve been eating avocados with the recipe below instead.

Ingredients

• 1 avocado
• Spriluna

Dressing/sauce:

• Local honey
• Organic Apple Cider Vinegar
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Crushed garlic
• Optional: Oyster Sauce, Honey+Kimchi

3/5 parts oil, 2/5 part Vinegar and Sauce, add garlic and enough honey to coat the bottom of the glass container you’re storing it in. Mix all together. Again, just eyeball this.

Cut the avocado in half and fill in the dips with the dressing. Add spriluna.

Opt: Add honey drizzled-kimchi on the side

My hallmates always know I’m around when they can smell a distinct, vinegary dressing. You can always put this concoction atop a bed of lettuce for a salad instead.

Feel free to substitute any of the ingredient for say, sesame seed oil, white vinegar. Whatever you can scrounge. The kimchi and honey is pretty adventurous, I like the combination of the sugary, spicy taste. Definitely not for the weak hearted.

We’ve got healthy fats from the avocado and oil, some vinegar for the stomach, garlic with it’s anti-aging, anti-fungal properties, honey with it’s amazing nutrients brought to you by bees truly, and kimchi, a fermented wonderfood.

• juice: carrot + asparagus + palmetto + banana + strawberries + apples + cucumber + eensy teensy bit of ginger
• (I made this batch sweeter because I wanted to make a chocolate green shake with carob powder and chocolate extract. XP tried it with a little bit and it tasted funny)
• orange
• lots of seaweed + sunflower seeds + spirluna + homemade dressing

I went to the cafeteria with my hallmates after the intramural volleyball game to hang out. I picked up some overly cooked vegetables and ate a little but I threw the rest away because I knew that they were overly processed and wouldn’t help me out with my detox. If I’m going to detox for 10 days, I at least want to do it well.

I haven’t had any hunger pains but something inside of me has been gnawing at my throat, telling me to eat. I usually just nibble on my seaweed. I’m going to the grocery store tomorrow and I’ll definitely be getting some lettuce too. My dad is going to visit on Sunday so he’ll bring a me a butt-ton load of produce. I didn’t think to weigh myself at the beginning of this experiment but I can tell that I’ve dropped a couple of pounds. A friend commented yesterday that my skin looked like it was glowing though I couldn’t really see a difference. I pooped 3 times on day 2 and 1-2 times during day 3. I’ve been visiting the bathroom a lot because I’ve been drinking so much. I’m not sure how much this correlates but I’m having a hard time emotionally today. But that does happen every so often with my lifestyle and classes here. I stared at my friend’s Jewish cookies and pretended to eat them. It’s probably a combination of factors. Perhaps because I can’t use food as a clutch anymore, emotional issues are also starting to float to the suffice. I finished all of the juice I made and I don’t have enough vegetables to make juice for tomorrow… I might just entirely fast until tomorrow night.

Day 4

• avocado
• banana
• apple
• grapefruit
• seaweed + sunflower seeds + homemade dressing

No juice. Didn’t have the appropriate amount of produce left. Biked to Whole Foods and bought $36 worth of groceries. I bought enough hoping to have it last for the rest of the fast along with knowing my dad is getting me some berries and avocados when he comes on day 6. I make my juice the night before each day because I don’t have time to do it during the morning. I juiced at night for day 5 and took a couple of sips.

Produce is surprisingly cheap. Seriously. When I bought the produce for day 1 I was expecting it to cost a fortune for the large amount and variety of produce I had picked. But it only cost $25. It would’ve taken me a very long time to finish if I just normally ate it. Buying the processed cereals and snacks is what’s expensive.

Joined the yoga and pilates II class* (much more challenging than yoga and pilots 1), wandered around outside, played in a park with children, and then played wii just dance, sports resort, and glee karaoke for 4 hours with my friends. My eardrums have never heard such botched singing. But, it was beautiful. I fell asleep while watching hairspray and conked out until 1 pm on Saturday morning! What an extraneous day!

*I ended up going to the registrar and adding it to my schedule

Day 5

• Juice: carrot + asparagus + apples + cucumber + tomato + grapefruit
• 2 slices of tomato (courtesy of my friend’s hamburger)
• Avocado
• Small apple
• Today’s juice is deliciouso.

Day 6

• No Juice
• Small apple
• Avocado
• seaweed + sunflower seeds + homemade dressing

Day 7

Juiced at 7 pm

• carrot + avocado (doesn’t juice well) + asparagus + celery + cucumber + tomato + apple + pomegranate + berries (raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, strawberries)
• Small Apple
• Half of an Avocado
• 2 bowls of lettuce + spriluna + homemade dressing (more “pure” now, changed to lemon + raw apple cider vinegar + honey)
• bowl of berries

Harder because I didn’t eat/ drink until 7 pm. I thought too much about food/my body. I EFT tapped on it and felt significantly better about myself/food. My partner is thinking about extending the juice fast because she’s really been enjoying it lately. I went out and celebrated the an Indian Holiday. I went to a campus event where we all ran around and threw different colored powders at each other. It was pretty fun. I wore a tight white t-shirt which was a failed tie dye earlier during the year. I’ve lost some weight on this cleanse and the t-shirt wouldn’t have comfortably fit me otherwise. I also went outside to read and soak up some sunshine today.

We’re using a pretty old juicer that Gelly received from her grandpa when she informed him that she wanted to go on a fast. It’s old but well-taken care of and it works like a champ. We went to purchase a colorful array of fruits and vegetables at the local Whole Foods, an approximate 20 minute walk from my school. We brought re-usable bags and lugged it the whole way. It wasn’t exactly pleasant but I liked it in a strange way. I really got to feel the impact of my actions. I had to literally carry and walk with everything that I had decided to purchase and I only walked a tiny fraction of the milage my produce had to travel to get to me. So yeah, that was cool. (erm can we say hippie geekery here?)

We decided to start the fast the next day, after the surprise party for another fellow hallmate**… There was poundcake. Mmm.

Rules

• Drink Juice
• Also allowed to still eat solid fruits and veggies if our hearts desire
• More lenient than most juice detoxers

Day 1

• Juice: Cucumber + apples + blueberries + strawberries + celery + asparagus
• 2 avocadoes + spriluna + homemade salad dressing
• 1 strawberry
• salad + sunflower seeds + dressing
• Seaweed

Didn’t notice too much of a difference in how I felt, maybe a little lighter. I also attended an extraneous cardio kickboxing class and a couple of martial arts classes***. Afterwards I dug into another avocado. I feel like the spriluna helps sedate me.

Day 2

• Juice: strawberries + banana + asparagus + tomato (yields lots of juice) + celery + cucumber + apples
• Seaweed wraps = seaweed + lettuce + sunflower seeds + spriluna + homemade salad dressing
• apple
• banana

Significantly hungrier than I was during day 1. I kept wanting to chomp down on more food. Made up for this with copious amounts of seaweed. Ran out of avocados. Must. Get. More. Had to turn down Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies. I actually finished all of the juice leftover from day 1 and the day 2 juice. I’ve had 3 bowel movements today even though I’ve consumed very little food. My stomach had flattened out a bit.

*name change

**She’s so brilliant and beautiful… She maintained straight A’s while playing sports and taking high level classes. She likes math. She’s amazing at drawing henna tattoos (self-taught) and actually has people pay her for them. She won the state championsip diving competition again this year while being horrendously sick (she was puking in the bathroom the night before). We had a little party for her because she won a full ride to the college she wanted to go to.

*** I’m currently taking a couple of trial classes with my friend. Last night was pretty rough with people *cough* my 2nd degree black belted friend *cough* violently attacking me… I’m not used to the violent nature of this martial art. I’m still deciding on whether or not to take the classes. It’s Toshindo, btw.

People normally separate things into appropriate and inappropriate reactions. What exactly constitutes the differentiation between ‘small’ and ‘big’ things? The events our lives, no matter how ‘small’ or insignificant they may seem can trigger very real traumas. Say for example, your dad always yelled at you for picking produce in the grocery market because your family couldn’t afford it. After growing up you may have enough money to buy things like vegetables. One day, while shopping with a friend, the friend jokingly tells you in a menacing voice to put the cherries back, they aren’t in season and it’s too expensive. Then, you break down in the middle of the grocery store without any rhyme or reason as to why.

Even though we live in a ‘first world country’ it doesn’t necessarily mean that our lives are better than everyone else’s. In fact, I think it’d be easy to make the argument that we don’t. I see people constantly punishing themselves for feeling very real emotions because they aren’t ‘reasonable’. The pain and suffering is, and the ‘shoulds’ and ‘shouldn’ts’ we impose on ourselves only make it worse. While it is good to be appreciative and grateful for one’s life, the forced ‘should be grateful’ harms ourselves because it’s a faux appreciation taught by and soaked in by the people around us. We don’t actually feel grateful so it only enforces the emphasis between how ungrateful we are but how grateful we should be.

Though most people can’t say they’ve been in anything particularly traumatic, the events of our childhoods are traumatic. The ingrained beliefs we pick up. “I’m not good enough”, “No one will like me if I don’t comply to authority”, “Love is conditional”, etc. We’re all craving this need for love. People are going through this all throughout their lives and punishing themselves for the events of their childhood. The child simply couldn’t understand and rationalize at such a young age. The looming threat of losing security, love, and control kept us on their toes. It’s simply a mechanism for survival. When we go through similar things later on in adulthood, the events and memories of the past replay themselves and we’re simply feeling the unresolved needs and traumas of our childhoods. They don’t have to be big bulking memories that had a noticeable effect on us after they happened. They could’ve been something like the simple phrase of “finish your plate and mommy will love you” repeated over and over again during the first 5 years of your life.

So, how have I been doing lately? how have I been?

I don’t even know what to say. This school has been the most intense experience I have ever taken under my wing. I practically live in a bubble. There’s this culture here that you can’t really find anywhere else which is why it’s difficult to explain to people. There aren’t any methods of comparison. Whenever I go out to the “real world”, it feels so weird. That there are these other living breathing people who aren’t enrolled in my classes, who have very different lives of their own. When you try to explain things about the school you make so many references to SSM specific things that you have to stop and explain the little parts. I almost forget that the world isn’t made up of very weird, interesting, hardworking, and good looking teenagers.

The best thing about the school is definitely the abundant amount of opportunities. Relationships, classes, language seminars, clubs, etc. It’s interesting to see what you end up manifesting in the school.

So yeah, I just felt like writing a random update. Maybe I’ll do it more often. maybe.