i am writing this while i sit in the dining room area of some dear friends' home. by a beautiful chance of fate perhaps, one of my dear friends is subletting from an apartment of another dear friend, and so he lives with some of our other dear friends. this means when i hang out with him and go to his apartment, i also get to hangout with his roommates (our friends!!!). life is beautiful in this way, how it brings you such great joys to participate in. he and i were at a mandatory event for a group we are part of on campus and there were so many leftovers. we took the food on a 30 minute haul to their place and they sat and enjoyed the food we brought for them. in turn, i got to hear about their weekends, how they spent superbowl sunday, and i got to gripe about the illness that has befallen me. they promptly brought me a glass of water, a glass of vitamin d and electrolytes, and a glass of special tea that is supposed to be healing. now we're all sitting at the dining table listening to our spotify blend and doing work together. the lighting is great in here, it doesn't hurt my eyes like the light has been hurting my eyes all day. it feels nice to be around people that make you feel good and want to take care of you. i will, now, be productive and finish my midterms, but i figured it would be nice to finally write a blog entry. i hope you find this heart warming as i have :)
lately, i have been thinking about my nintendo 3ds from when i was a kid. it was a deep, shiny red like how my mom's hair was dyed when she bought it for me. i remember carrying this everywhere with me and spending so much time on it playing games and taking pictures. my sister, who is one year older than me, had the same one -- except, hers was black. we would sync them and play games together and share the little cards that slide into the back of the device. when i was home last weekend, i looked all through my closet and desk to look for my ds... with no luck. as i sat with this and thought about all the places it could be, i figured i would ask my sister if she had hers so i could play with it. she did, and when i got home for the weekend (today) i asked her for it. i was scrolling through all of the familiar pages, which feel so far from me now. and then i saw the camera app. i remember spending so much time with my camera, so i went through her gallery. i saw pictures of us from 2011-2013 (i was between 6-9 years old during this entire duration). i also saw pictures of my other sisters (they were so edgy lol), of my mom (her hair and her eyebrows have gone through so much), my grandma (i don't remember her looking this young), my step-dad (whose hair was not gray like it is now), my two chihuahas (i forgot what their faces looked like so close up), my step-siblings (it's crazy to think that they were ever teenagers) and my dad (hm). i watched videos and heard audio clips of what things were like in my old house. we used to play mario a lot on the wii, we still do. our voices were so soft and high. my mom sounded exactly the same. my nose was so little and round and cute. i used to hate so much about myself when i was little. i can't believe i have forgotten so much. riddled with melancholy, i made my way through the rest of the device to update it, clean things up, and connect it to the wifi. when i got to the settings, i saw the names of the old wifi accounts (servers? routers?) we used all those years ago and started sobbing, there, on my bedroom floor. i don't know why it was the wifi (of all things) that really got to me, but it did. after i calmed down and crawled my way into bed, i realized that i haven't checked the storage i have by my bay window. i found my old sketchbooks, diplomas, old posters, books i used to read, and my suit-case record player. and i found my red nintendo 3ds. all i could do was laugh at how different my pictures were from the pictures that my sister took on her 3ds. she took so many photos of herself and of us, but mostly herself. it's difficult for me to think about what my life was like when i was this young, and even more to match something visual with it. it's funny, though, because looking at these photos only made me ponder how i haven't really changed all that much. that little baby with the full bangs, crooked teeth, tiny hands, and chubby face is still with me -- i still miss her so much.