I’m pretty sure I’m not bipolar….

I’m a little bit torn on this one.  On one hand, I want to present it to you it in its full raw format, and on the other hand, I want to organize it a little bit just so that it has a more powerful effect on its readers.  I really want to show this in its raw format so that you can see the mindset I was in when I wrote it.  Occasionally when I read it, I can actually get back into that mindset, and I really want everyone else to get into that mindset as well.  I do however fear that no one will be able to get into the same mindset and instead gets lost.  Decisions, decisions.  For the sake of experimenting, I’m going to present it to you in its absolute raw form.  I truly hope you can go with the flow.

            This story took place on 5/3/2000.  I know this for a fact because I wrote it down.  That’s right!  I wrote this story down at 7:45AM on the closest thing I could find at the time, which was a piece of cardboard I got from work.  Here is the story verbatim:

            (A side note:  Squall and Rinoa are two characters from the game Final Fantasy VIII.  At one point in time in the game, when Squall desperately needed to remember what Rinoa looked like, he couldn’t.  He just couldn’t)

           “Last night, I had a dream.  I dreamed I was in some snowy place.  Aspen I think.  That’s what it looked like.  I was in a hotel on those walking elevator when I met her.  Her name was Sophia.  She was long haired and blond with…anyways when we started talking to each other, I wasn’t too trusting of her motives so I told her my name was Jim.  Well we kept talking and one issue that came up was how her family was so controlled by money that her parents sees it as a measure of success.  That doesn’t matter much, but I remembered it and that matters.  Anyway we just kept talking and then we came across a swimming pool.  The two of us decided to take a dip.  That is with our clothes on.  We swam around for a while and then we got out.  When we got out, we realized that it was freezing with our clothes wet.  So I remember saying “your place or mine.”

            “Mine.”  She said in her voice, a very distinct voice for that matter.  So we went to her place, which happens to have 2 separate shower rooms.  We took a bath in those 2 separate shower rooms.  I can’t remember what else happened, but I remembered meeting her family.  2 older brothers.  I think.  Anyways.  After that I went home, or at least to my hotel room.  During the time that we were talking, I realized that she approached me because of the way I acted when she first saw me.  You know how weird I can be sometimes.  Anyways, I realized as I was walking home that I didn’t tell her my real name or a way to reach me.  I was somewhat devastated but not quite yet.  The next day, my family decided to have breakfast at the hotel restaurant.  I think some wedding was going on, but I saw her there.  I decided to tell her my real name.  I looked for my wallet, but I couldn’t find it.  So I asked my dad.  He was hanging on to it.  I don’t know why he has my wallet, but he had it.  So he gave it to me.  I looked in to look for my driver’s license.  I approached her from behind but events forced my to take a seat.  I was only one chair away from her and I can’t wait til the event was over.  When I kept watch of her, I noticed that she looked back to see me, but I looked away.  I had to look at something else.  I took another look at her.  She was looking forward.  I rummage through my wallet and found my driver’s license.  I want to show it to her and tell her that my name is Karli Winata.  I realized that I had wanted to tell her before when I was at her house, but I didn’t have the chance.  When I got out the license, that’s when the worst happened.  I was starting to wake up.  I said “NO!”  I actually did say it “NO!”  Twice I think.  I decided to burn her face into my memory, but at that last second, I can’t remember her face at all.  Just like Squall can’t remember Rinoa’s face during that time compression bit.  When I woke up, that’s when I realized what I felt during all that time.  It was love.  And I lost it just when I had it.  Our talk showed me that she wasn’t just beautiful on the outside, but within as well.  I want to see her again.  So I forced myself to stay asleep, but my mind was already wandering off to other dreams.  I lost her.  Worst of all, I can’t remember what she looks like.  That time when she looked back at the reception, that was the last time I saw her face, but when I look back on it, her face is replaced by someone else.  2 thinks Karli.  One, always tell your real name to people and 2 don’t you ever think of this as stupid!  Her name is Sophia.  Don’t forget her.  PLEASE!!!!!  I want to tell someone, but everyone is still asleep.”

            For about a year afterwards, I really did have this story on the back of my mind constantly.  Now it takes effort to actually care.  Who the hell have I become?

            The past two stories have been a little bit dark.  The third story in my Story Theme is far lighter than the others.

            I must’ve watched or read over a thousand little ingenious plots concocted by the protagonist of the story.  Every time, and especially if the plot truly is ingenious, I’m amazed and wished that I could have come up with such a plan.  In the back of my mind, I knew that the writers had possibly hundreds of hours to come up with, refine, and perfect these little plots that the protagonist somehow comes up with in a matter of seconds.  Despite that I always had a wish that somehow, I could come up with my own little hare-brained scheme that for some odd reason worked.  Fate was kind enough to actually give me that opportunity.

            Back when I was in high school, I had a friend, Sarah, who liked to be part of the school play every year, just like me.  That’s how I knew her.  One day in my senior year, I was wearing a UCSC shirt with their school mascot, the banana slug, printed on it, and she showed a great interest in that shirt.  A little light bulb lit up that said “Next time I go there, I should get her one.  She’d love that.”  In case you’re wondering, yes, I do come up with strange little ideas that involves a huge sacrifice on my part with little in return but would make others around me happier (a side note:  I’m glad that I’m not the only who does this.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you).  That weekend while my mother and I visited my sister, who attended UCSC, in Santa Cruz, I went and bought the shirt as I had planned.  On the following Monday, I gave that shirt to her as planned.  She refused.

            “I can’t take this shirt,” said Sarah.

            “But why not!  I want you to have it.”

            “I know you Karli, you don’t have that many shirts.  You should keep it for yourself.”

            “That’s not true.  I have lots of shirts.”

            “Sure you do Karli,” she said sarcastically.  ”I’ve never seen you in more than like three or four shirts in a month.”

            I was unable to convince her that I actually do have more than enough shirts for myself.  I rarely change my shirt on a daily basis.  In a period of a month, I only change what I wear once every week or so.  Because of this little behavior, she truly believes that I don’t have that many shirts in my collection.  Now, I had two options.  One, I continue to barrage her with “I do too have a lot of shirts.” Two, I can drop the whole thing altogether and keep the shirt for myself.  Neither options appealed to me, which might explain why I decided to be all movie-protagonist-like and come up with my own version of a “hare-brained” scheme.  The plan didn’t materialized as quickly as I had hoped it would (it took a day for me to come up with it), but hell, it’s a viable plan nonetheless.  She believed I didn’t own that many shirts.  I was going to prove her wrong.

            For my grand plan to work, I chose a day when she and I will have to see each other very often to execute my plan, which happens to be the next day.  I could barely sleep the night before knowing that my plan if it works is brilliant.  The next day came, and here is a sample dialog when I first saw her for the day.

            “Hi Sarah.”

            “Hey Karli.”

            Nothing out of the ordinary yet.  Second time we met:

            “Hi Sarah.”

            “Hi again Karli.”

            “See you at rehearsal.”

            “OK see you then.”

            Nothing yet.  The third time is a little bit more interesting:

            “Hi Sarah, did you get your lines memorized yet?”

            “No not yet, but I’m getting close,” she said with a quizzical look on her face.

            “Uhm…What’s up?”

            “Uhm well…it’s nothing.”

            “Well OK than.”

            She’s starting to wonder.  Finally, the fourth time around:

            “Hey Sarah.  Whatcha doing?”

            “Just painting this backdrop…” That quizzical look came back to her face, which by the way was priceless.

            “Something the matter?”

            “Uhm…well…did you change your shirt?”

            “No,” I said while suppressing a smile.

            “Oh…God I could’ve sworn you wore something different earlier.”

            “No, no.  Definitely haven’t changed my shirt today.”

            “Well, must be my imagination than.”

            Getting the idea?  I brought every single shirt I owned and stashed them in my locker.  Every time we lose sight of each other, I changed my shirt.  Seeing in writing as I am doing right now, it does sound like a stupid plan, but it turns out to be a better plan than I thought.  At the end of the day, I changed my shirt a total of 14 times, and every time she asked, I denied it.  I must have done that so well that she was convinced that I was telling the truth.  At one point in time, she decided to not lose sight of me at all.  I thought that might be the end of it, but eventually, she had to do something else which gave me the opportunity to change shirt again.  She came back in shock seeing that my shirt has changed again.  I can’t even begin to describe just how priceless that face of hers was.

            Of course, she wasn’t the only one to notice my changes.  Everyone in the play started wondering if I had changed my shirt.  I knew that if the plan was to work, I had to keep up the lie with everyone.  Although some ignored it, others tried to pry the truth out of me.  I stood my ground and lied to them.  Now everyone was starting to wonder about their own sanity.  It’s funny how much pleasure I take in seeing other people’s faces pondering about the validity of their own memories.

            When rehearsal was finally over, I turned myself in to Sarah and told her about my plan.  I even showed her my stash of shirts.  She was relieved to know that she wasn’t going crazy.  I offered her the shirt again.

            “OK, I’ll take the shirt.  My God, Karli, you’re so weird!”

            “Yeah I know.”

            “Don’t ever change!”

            With that she gave me hug with a huge smile on her face.  If there’s ever a moment I want frozen in time, it is that moment.  With that single moment, I could’ve died and feel that I’ve used my life to it’s absolute fullest.  Alas, a fate’s smile never last longer than anyone wants it to.  Time moved on, but she and I have never forgotten that day.  How could I?  I still have the shirt that started all this.  I wonder if she still have that shirt?

Today I will continue my Story theme with yet again another story.  Although it may not seem like it at first, this is one of my favorite stories from my own life.

            It’s always been a blessing to say that you have someone you can truly call your best friend.  Here’s one that not many think about.  It’s also a blessing to say that you never have to call anyone your enemy, nemesis.  Unfortunately, I can’t say I know the feeling.  I don’t mean enemies as in rivalries and blood feud.  Competition and history respectively drives those kinds of conflicts.  The one I’m talking about involves a person’s ideals and ethics versus another person’s ideals and ethics.  Here, the two will never find neutral ground no matter how hard either one tries.  They will always find themselves at each other’s throats.  From what I’ve seen, competitive reality TV shows thrives on that little fact.  My nemesis is a guy named Jay.  I wish I remember his last name that away I could say “Hey if you ever see a guy named Jay something-something, kick his butt for me.”  That’s right, I do wish him harm.  I do wish an untimely death for him.  I do wish him to disappear off the face of this planet, but those are just wishes.  Mainly I’m just glad I’ll probably never see him again.

            He and I worked at Just Desserts on Irving Street in its final days.  We met about 4 or 5 months before the store closed down.  I didn’t think much about him at first.  In fact, I can’t remember very much about the early days between the two of us.  We were just two coworkers at first, but as time goes bye, we started to get on each other’s nerves.  He was the slacker, and I was the straight arrow.  He would be talking to his friends while I was dealing with the customers.  A great deal of the time, I would be doing most of the work while he sits around.  For some God-forsaken reason, he felt justified in all of this.  The worst part is that no one seems to notice.  He was after all gifted with the silver tongue.  He knows how to talk with the customers, my other friends at work, and even me.  I was always disarmed whenever I talked to him.  All of my anger and frustrations would be extinguished by his words.  I always felt powerless against him.  That eventually turned into animosity.  Only with this public anger do I finally feel some bit of power over him.  He finally gets the message that I don’t like him.  This conflict came to its climax 4 days before the store closed.

            I was the closing supervisor that night (can you imagine me….a supervisor?), and seeing how it was only my second time as a supervisor, the burden of being one rang clearly in my ears.  I was still strictly by the book.  One of my duties is to make sure everyone did their closing duties.  When I checked the store’s floor, it didn’t looked like as if it was swept yet.  Guess whose responsibility it was to sweep the floor that night.  I went up to Jay and asked him if he already swept the floor.  I didn’t want to be presumptuous by openly accusing him of not doing his job, although I already know the answer.  After a short, but very noticeable, pause, he said he did.  Now I got myself a little dilemma.  Do I pretend to take his word, or do I confront him on his lie.  The answer is actually obvious, and yet I was still confused over which course of action to take.  Thanks to my animosity for him, I decided to confront him.  I told him to sweep the floor because I knew he hadn’t done it yet.  He refused.  He wanted to talk to his friends in the backyard (our store had an enclosed backyard.  As to why his friends are there is an even longer story than this one).  Shocked by his defiance, I insisted that he does his job.  Somewhere during our “little” argument I said “As long as you’re on the clock, you have to do your job and sweep that floor!”  Can you guess what he did next?  No he didn’t go to sweep the floor.  He clocked out.  “There I’m not on the clock anymore!”  With those words he proceeded to the backyard.  I was frozen to the spot.  “What just happened,” went through my mind a couple of times in that little surreal moment.  I felt defeated and powerless once again like so many times before against him, but this time it ended differently.  An insignificant memory rose out of the abyss I call my long-term memory.  I remembered a policy that my boss once told me, and that was the time to enforce it.  Hatred and anger came to the rescue as well and brought me to the backyard to face him.

            “GET OUT!” I said firmly to him from the doorway.

            “You can’t throw me out!” he said dismissively.

            “Are you on the clock?!” I asked with such fury that I surprised myself.

            “Well..um..no.”

He got up, collected his stuff, and went passed me to leave the store.  The emotion I felt afterwards could not be described.  For once in my entire life, I was right.  I wasn’t just right.  I was absolutely right, and I used it as a weapon to inflict all of my anger and hate upon my enemy.  The glee I felt for doing exactly what I wanted to do at exactly the precise moment to do it was immense.  Every choice and actions I’ve ever made and done in this world always left me with distinct feeling that I should have taken a different path, but not that one.  In that one, I didn’t care what the other path in the road would have looked like because I know that the path I picked was right.

            As if the story couldn’t end any better than that, it gets better.  After I swept the floor (a small price to pay), I wrote a note detailing the events that just transpired to my boss, the store manager.  With it she started a motion of events that eventually got him fired.  I didn’t care that he would have eventually lost the job anyway like the rest of us.  I was just happy to know that I had something to do with him getting fired.  If that wasn’t enough, I never saw him ever again after that night.  That’s right, my last memory of him is him leaving the store defeated….BY ME!

            Truthfully though, I wished I could’ve felt this way under far, far better circumstances like deciding to marry the right woman or deciding to help a stranger who rewarded me handsomely.  After all, that great feeling I felt was at a cost to someone else, but than again, if he wasn’t such an absolute jerk that he was, none of this would have happened.  So screw him!