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I was thirteen, almost fourteen, when I lost my paternal grandmother. It wasn’t the first taste of death that I’d had (my great-grandfather died about four years earlier), but it was the closest one. I can’t say I was particularly touched by her death; the woman wasn’t a huge part of my life, and she and my father were very distant. But regardless of how much or little I loved her, she was still my grandmother, and it was to some degree sad.

What touched me more was the last time I remember actually seeing her. It might have even been the last time I saw her. It was in the hospital, probably late April or early May 2006. She was lying in one of those mechanical hospital beds, which aren’t as comfortable as you would think. The tubes and IVs made the fifty-nine-year-old woman look even sicklier than she would have if she had been in her own bed.

Visits with her were always awkward and weird. I didn’t know what to do or what to say, since her and I had spent maybe five collective hours together, just her and I. I’d spent a few nights at her house, but it was always with my cousins. Not only that, but after spending so much time in hospitals myself, they always gave me an uneasy feeling. Needless to say I hated visiting her, staring at this woman I really didn’t feel for, but knowing that it still hurt to see her dying.

After some amount of time standing in the corner of the hospital room as my father and some combination of his three sisters (I don’t think all four of them were ever there together at there at the same time) made some kind of small talk, we said our goodnights. When it was my turn, I was at a loss for words. I don’t remember ever actually telling the woman that I loved her, so what else would I say in the moment?

“I hope you get better, Nana.”

For whatever reason (maybe it was some naivety or unwillingness to grasp the truth), these words actually came out. My grandmother had pancreatic cancer. I think somewhere in the back of my head I might have known she wouldn’t get better, but I cannot be sure. I don’t even remember the emotion with which I said it, be it sincerity or awkwardness.

“Has no one told her?” I remember her asking. She looked, in particular, at my father. She then looked back at me. “I’m not getting better.”

There was probably some honest recognition in her voice, but for some reason, I almost remember there being a melodramatic tone. As if she were trying to make me feel bad that she was dying, and was proud of it. Whether this is the actual case or not, I can never be sure. I know I started tearing up, though. At thirteen, having someone tell me they were going to die, and soon, was hard to hear.

But what really makes this memory stick out in my head was the fact that I didn’t know what to do. If this had been my mother’s parents, I might have wrapped my arms around them and lost control. If I had had the time, I might have done that with my paternal grandfather. (He died within three months of being diagnosed with cancer, so there was too little a time of suffering to even begin to come to terms with him dying.) But combined with the fact that I didn’t know how my father was reacting to his negligent mother dying, I wasn’t even sure how I should act.

So I just silently looked down at my hands. I think she said something about how it was okay, or how she was sorry to upset me, because I remember nodding. When I finally escaped the room, I avoided eye contact with either parent. I didn’t want them to see me cry. Why, I can’t even begin to tell you. When I got to the car, I climbed in the backseat and shed a few silent tears. It was nighttime, so I knew as long as I kept quiet, they wouldn’t know.

She died some time later, on May 15, 2006. It was the day after Mother’s Day. My father called me shortly after I got home from school. He was at work, so I have no idea how he took it, but I only cried for a short time. Maybe five minutes, before the kids of my mother’s at-home daycare crowded around me and made me laugh. I remember feeling horrible for laughing; my grandmother had just died, I shouldn’t have felt happy. I kept trying to mourn her, but the feelings felt exactly how they were: forced. To be honest, those five minutes are all I can remember crying over her. But every time I pass the house she used to live in (which I do frequently), though, I think of that time in the hospital, awkwardly telling a woman dying of cancer that I hoped she got better.

April 24, 2014

① When I stop to think about the most important thing in my life, I would almost have to say that it’s video games. From the Sega Genesis in the early nineties all the way to the PlayStation 4 today, gaming has been a huge part of my life.  I’ve been playing them and spending most of my free time consumed by them since I can consciously remember, and it’s something that has bonded me with friends and family. Really, it’s become more than just a pastime for me; it’s a way of life.

② The Sega Genesis was the first gaming system my family owned. My father had games like Madden NFL, Cool Spot, and Cosmic Spacehead. As a young kid, before I could remember, my father used to give me the spare controller, unplugged, and let me pretend I was playing while he would play. I was nonethewiser, and I’m sure I had a blast. But of course, this led me to wanting to play myself, which I remember doing quite a bit. Madden NFL never interested me; it was far too advanced for five-year-old me. But I remember that Cool Spot and Cosmic Spacehead were my favorites to play. In the old days of gaming, there were no ways to save your game, so I never got very far. But as a kid, it didn’t really matter. I wouldn’t have remembered where I was when I picked it back up anyway.

③ Following the Sega Genesis was the system that revolutionized car trips forever: the Sega Game Gear. This was the first hand-held gaming console I owned, though if you ask my parents, they’ll probably say it was really my father’s. I’m sure we had a few games for it, but the ones I remember playing were Tom and Jerry: The Movie, and some casino game. Though it was my first portable gaming system, it wasn’t my favorite. In reality, I remember little of this, other than the fact that I often left it on the floor of the car to get trampled on when I got in and out. Its life was cut short due to my childish neglect, which is something my father still whines about to this day.

④ The next gaming console my family owned was one that still holds a place in my heart: the PlayStation. The first game I remember playing was Army Men 3D, a game giving life to those classic plastic toy soldiers. There was a story-mode campaign to the game, but I know I never got very far. Every time I got shot at by an enemy soldier, my heart would skip a beat and I would be afraid of moving out from behind cover. There was a multiplayer mode to this game, which I remember playing often with my neighbor and best friend Nicky, as well as my dad. Playing with him would give me an equal adversary, if not an easy one since I played far more often than him and probably knew more what I was doing. But it was fun, and it was another way for us to bond and become best friends. However, playing with my father was not as happy of a memory. As a kid younger than ten, I wasn’t the most strategic gamer, and my father, twenty-one years older than me and an avid gamer, definitely was. I don’t know if I ever actually beat him, but if I did, it was likely because he let me. After listening to me cry to my mother about how he would play unfair, claiming that him being older than me was the reason I couldn’t beat him, countless times, I can imagine he would let me win to shut me up and dry the tears. Why I continuously challenged him to matches baffles me; maybe it was the self-destructive side of me, or maybe it was the hope that maybe someday I might grow smarter than him.

⑤ Although we had many games for the PlayStation, my absolute favorite will always be Tomb Raider. (Though Spyro the Dragon is a very close contender.) My father rented it once, probably interested in the game’s protagonist, but didn’t like the gameplay. For some reason, I tried the game, and fell in love. With what, I don’t exactly know, since the same fear that prevented me from getting very far in Army Men 3D also hindered my ability to play through even the first level of Tomb Raider. I was, and still am, very easily startled; so when wolves pop out of seemingly nowhere with little warning aside from a howl in the distance, I have a hard time moving forward in the game. My mother told me that I would have to get her, a person who isn’t very fond of console gaming, to fight the wolves for me so that I could continue in the story. Of course, because the graphics were so horrible and the game was too open-ended, I never actually finished the game. Still, to this day, I’ve yet to finish any Tomb Raider game made for the original PlayStation, but my experience for this game as a kid spiraled to an obsession of the entire series during middle and high school. I now own each title, save the recent reboot released last year, which for various reasons infuriates me.

⑥ I’m not sure how old I was when I received this, but my Nintendo Game Boy was the hand-held console that changed my life. Pokémon Red and Blue versions started it all, creating an obsession that has lasted for almost twenty years. These games, including my love for the anime series based on the games, has given bonded me with quite a few people, not just with Nicky in elementary school, but my neighbors in middle school, and my best friend from college as well. But it wasn’t just Pokémon that kept me interested in my original Game Boy Pocket, and later the Game Boy Color, Advanced, and SP (all of which I still own and occasionally use); over the course of my life, I’ve had, and probably lost, more game cartridges than I can remember. The Game Boy might be the best thing about being a nineties kid.

⑦ PC gaming isn’t my favorite form, console being my first go-to. But there have been a number of games that I couldn’t live without, namely the Forgotten Realms series, the Sims series, and Minecraft. Baldur’s Gate, and Icewind Dale, two Dungeons & Dragons games in the Forgotten Realms series, were among the first computer games I fell in love with, and are still favorites today. I watched my dad play them a couple times as a kid, and knew that I had to try them. Since Icewind Dale had a multiplayer mode, and through LAN, my father and I would play together, something I always loved doing. The Sims series is the one that my mom and I bond over, and it’s her love for the games that makes the three of us a family of gamers.  Her and I still share expansion packs, tips, and building ideas. My love for this game, as well as my obsession with the blocky building game Minecraft, has also bonded me with friends in high school and college.

⑧ Today, my main source of gaming would have to be the PlayStation 3, the system that commands most of my gaming life. I greatly enjoyed the PlayStation 2 (which I remember playing quite a bit with my dad and neighbors in middle school), and I’m impressed with the graphics of the PlayStation 4 (which my father and one of my friends owns), but there are too many great games for the PlayStation 3 that I’m not quite finished with. Games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Final Fantasy XIII, BioShock, Call of Duty, and Grand Theft Auto V are among the titles and series that I will never grow tired of.

⑨ Gaming has not only been a source of entertainment and relaxation, but a way to bond with most everyone in my life. My father and I wouldn’t be nearly as close as we are now if it weren’t for split-screen battles in Army Men 3D, co-op slashing of dragons in Icewind Dale over LAN, or competitive teamwork online in Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto V.  I don’t think the friends I’ve had over the years, or the ones I have now, would be as close as we were or are if it weren’t for our bonding over various video games. Of my three closest friends now, our idea of having a good time is either playing PlayStation, Minecraft, or the Sims, and it has created some of the best memories. But even beyond that, it’s given me a goal in life: to work for a game development company in developing characters and creating plots and stories for RPG video games.

March 13, 2014

When I meet someone new, or create a new profile on some  website, there’s always that default question that drives me insane: Who are you? Theoretically, it should be the easiest question of all, because it’s about the person I should know the best. In reality, though, I don’t know myself any better than someone on the other side of the world.

Labels: they’re a great way to describe oneself and find a place in the world where one would fit. Theoretically, anyway. But even though I hate labels, I can never find one that fits me. And when I think I do, I realize that the opposite labels also apply to me. Sometimes I feel like I’m so full of contradictions that something must be wrong.

Am I a tomboy? I do love dirt bikes, cars, camo (army [non-pink] style, not the woodland-hunter kind with twigs and leaves), combat boots, rock music, “non-nerdy” video games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto, and occasionally sports (ice hockey and football to be specific). I also hate, and don’t understand, fashion (today’s trends make me want to gauge my eyes out) and I don’t understand the fascination with diamonds (they are bland and too pricey in my opinion).

Despite this, I also fit under the girly-girl label. I like pop music, dramas and romances, nail polish, perfume, lip gloss, and some jewelry, and (what I’ve heard been called) “girly” video games like the Sims and Catz (a very old computer game). I will sometimes (though rarely) try on two or three outfits before settling on the right one, and I have been known to spend hours in a shoe store (though anymore, it’s to find that one pair of boots or shoes that doesn’t look God-awful ugly).

Somewhat contrary to both these two general labels, I’m also somewhat of a nerd. I love paper and pens (getting the right combination of the two is essential to my success in any class, though this is often hard), computers and technology, “nerdy” video games like the Elder Scrolls, Pokémon, and Final Fantasy, Japanese anime and music, fantasy and science-fiction, and old Spongebob Squarepants episodes. I’m a stickler for grammar and rules, and I’m actually fairly decent at math (though I dislike it). I like things symmetrical and in order (as evident by my alphabetized video game and book collections), which has often earned me the title of nerd.

Finally, to really keep things interesting, I’ve even been placed under the “emo” category (though I haven’t really been called this since high school). I love the color black (so much that I almost dyed my hair and painted my room this color), blood and gore, and bands like My Chemical Romance, Green Day, and Simple Plan (though I’ve heard that being obsessed with music in general is an “emo” thing).

 But labels go beyond these simplistic, somewhat high school-ish categories. There’s country folk versus city slickers. I was born in Bridgeport (city) and raised (until I was ten) in Ansonia (suburb), both of which are in Connecticut. I was then transplanted into rural upstate New York, where you can’t get anywhere without passing a farm, hearing cows, and smelling manure (which makes my eyes water and nose burn). I often say I’m more of a city girl than a country girl, but if I think about it, I’d have to say I’m equally both. I’ve been told I speak differently than my parents (who were born and raised in upstate New York), though no one tells me how specifically (but my parents would agree with this statement). I love the noises of the city (honking horns and people talking can lull me to sleep), being in the center of a lively atmosphere (though I somewhat dislike people in general, I like knowing that I’m never alone), and having everything you need within walking (or short driving) distance, and having cellular service wherever you go. You can’t get any of these things in Hartwick (where I actually live) or Cooperstown (where I actually went to school). But as much as I love the city, I have to say, I’ve been in the country too long to say I’m a city girl. I love riding dirt bikes (I have actually gone “mudding”, which is the hick sport of speeding a vehicle through puddles of mud, the deepness of which depending on the size of the vehicle), I have hick parents, I like being able to see the stars at night, and I use terms like “my neck of the woods”, “subs” (I’ve never used the terms “grinders” or “wedges”) and “four-wheelers” (city slickers refer to them as quads, I’ve heard).  Although I don’t use the word myself, the word “brang” doesn’t sound entirely incorrect to me (though I realize it is correct to say “brought”). However, I do use “tag sale”, “garage sale”, and “yard sale” interchangeably, though I don’t know which term is used where.

Another common way to categorize people is to say if they are mature or childish. I am both, to very extreme degrees. As mentioned before, I love watching old Spongebob Squarepants episodes, and I sometimes find myself watching Hannah Montanna, the Suite Life on Deck, or Wizards of Waverly Place (Disney shows that were popular when I was in high school, though I would never admit to watching these). I think hiccupping and passing gas is funny, and often cannot help laughing when someone does so. Actually, I laugh at almost everything, even when something is not funny. I hate big, complicated words and old, stuffy literature. But at the same time, childish people drive me insane. I get very irritated when people make voices for stuffed animals, or treat them as if they are real and a part of the family. Going to the theatres to see the newest Disney animated film is not what I would call a good time (though all my friends rushed to see the movie Frozen the day it came out). I’m often told that I take everything way too seriously, but I just wish that some people would grow up and be a little more serious.

Eventually, the world of labels slowly morphs into a world of adjectives, but when it comes to describing me, this doesn’t make it any easier. I can be shy and quiet, loud and annoying, dumb and aloof, quick and smart, creative and open-minded, boring and close-minded, hyper and random, lazy and lame, messy and easygoing, neat and picky, happy and carefree, grumpy and stubborn. No matter what word you pick that fits me, I can almost guarantee that the opposite will also apply.

Be it labels or adjectives, it is hard to categorize myself and find a place in society for me. Sometimes I feel like I belong everywhere and nowhere, and it really makes the question of who I am hard to answer. I’m just me, whoever that individual is. When people ask me that question, the answer I usually give is: talk to me and you figure it out.

April 10, 2014

I am not afraid to admit it: I am one of those people who hate social media, and I’m really starting to hate the Internet. I’m not saying that these things don’t have their advantages; in fact, I spend quite a bit of time on the Internet. But what really gets under my skin and make me want to burn every server in the world is the way that the Internet and social media is ruining the English language, and in a lot of cases, life.

First and foremost, the Internet is teaching people how to not speak properly. Not only is it creating ridiculous new words (like “selfie”), shortening everything (like “idk”, “omg”, “cray”, or “delish”), creating new meanings for previous words (“Facebook” is not a verb, and “feels” is not a noun), even giving new names to old things (“#” is a number or pound sign, not a “hashtag”, whatever that means), but it’s destroying grammar. I hardly know anyone anymore who knows how to use apostrophes and commas correctly. In some cases, more often with text messages, people don’t even know how to use periods (creating confusing run-on sentences that I must decode) or question marks (by either using too many or none at all). Now this wouldn’t be so horrible if it was contained on the Internet, on places like Facebook or Twitter, or in text messages. But when children see that it’s okay to just throw grammar to the wind online, they don’t  really learn how to use it. Teachers can only do so much; for a kid to really grasp something, they need to practice it. But when they go home at night and spend their time on Facebook, reading and posting in improperly formed sentences, they don’t really learn how to use grammar correctly. Then it gets to the point where they’re writing shit for essays in school. I’m ashamed to say I see this a lot in college too, though less often in my creative writing classes. Then there are the “typos” caused by a lack of proof-reading. I understand that sometimes when sending a text message, time is of the essence. This is especially true when in an argument. But it would take literally five seconds to quickly read over a text, Facebook post, or Tweet before sending it. Just five seconds and you can catch small little mistakes that are unnecessary. But today, people are just too damn lazy to give two shits about what they say. Everyone has this “I don’t care, they know what I’m trying to say anyway” attitude. Or, they say “I’m too busy to re-read things” or “no one cares”. Again, this wouldn’t be the end of the world if it was just contained on the Internet. But like with kids in school, adults bring this to the work force. My father reads the Daily News from New York every day at lunch, and he is always catching grammatical errors. (This is especially alarming, since grammar isn’t my father’s strongest subject.) And even on television and the movies, the horrors of the Internet can be found. Almost every commercial advertises some kind of “hashtag”. Example: “#HowDoYouKFC”. What is the necessity in this? Not to mention that KFC is a combination of letters that represents Kentucky Fried Chicken, and is not in itself, or through what it represents, a verb. Every product has its own hashtag (or the product’s slogan does). Every movie has one. To make things even more disgusting, there’s even a movie titled “That Awkward Moment”, which is just the cherry on top. Try to make a “hashtag” out of that – oh, wait. There already is one. That doesn’t get confusing?

The destruction caused by social media and the Internet doesn’t stop there, though. There are phrases and “clever” (in who’s eyes, I’m not entirely sure) things that people seem to want to use over and over again. I’m talking about those “that moment when” or “that awkward moment when” posts. Not every story you tell needs to start out like that. It was nice the first maybe five times. But by the five millionth, it just became irritating. It’s especially annoying when the following situation doesn’t even really make sense. Example: “That awkward moment when you go to make toast and there’s no bread in the fridge.” How the hell is that awkward? It just means that someone needs to go to the damn store. But apparently that’s not enough. Someone somewhere had to go invent what I call improper Franglais, combining French and English that doesn’t even make sense when translated. Example: A drawing of someone lying in bed with the caption “le me in le bed”. In what world is that creative or clever? To me, it’s an insult to the French (and English) language! Part of me is curious, though, if French people would say “the moi dans the lit”, which would be a direct opposite translation of the previous sentence. I’m praying that they don’t, lest I lose all faith in humanity.

It’s not all about destroying the language, though. Facebook and Twitter have been abused. We all (who have profiles on these sites) have seen someone air their dirty laundry online for the world to see. Not only does this annoy people who follow you and read your posts or Tweets as they show up in their feeds, but it causes problems, sometimes going as far as starting a dramatic shit-fest. Facebook is not the place to call out your ex-boyfriend or girlfriend for cheating on your or treating you like shit. It’s also not the place to update the world on what you are eating for breakfast or lunch. (Just like Instagram is not the place to upload pictures of these meals.) Newsflash: no one really cares.

It is to the point now where I can’t even go on the Internet. I avoid Facebook, Twitter, and most other social media and blogging sits as much as possible. When I do go on, it doesn’t take me long before I start wanting to pull my hair out or slap someone, although sometimes texting my friends or even my parents (my mother is the worst) elicits the same reactions. Let’s face it: I’ve lost all faith in the human race. I’m afraid to ever have kids, simply because I don’t want to raise a social media-obsessed, illiterate dummy. Sometimes I want to move to France, but I fear that the Internet is destroying the French language as well.

April 3, 2014