Talk with Kim on 01/02/2023
Today is 01/08/2023 and I am catching up on the journals I didn't write.
On Tuesday 01/02/2023, me, Kim, and Steven ate some of the spiciest food we ever had. It was Szechuan dish and the food was good but it was spicy. I think it was the spiciest food I ever had in my life so far. The restaurant was named spicy love or something and the chinese restaurant had the red chilis in large group strings hanging on the walls. When we got our dishes and I ate the chicken, my mouth burned immediately. All the spice from the chilis had been absorbed by the oil and soup. Even writing now and thinking about the dish, my face is sweating a little. When I was eating the dish, sweat was dripping down my head one by one. I couldn't finish my food not because I was full but because it was too spicy and I ran out of rice.
While waiting for restaurant, Steven told us about the time he got kissed by a Korean classmate who had a boyfriend which didn't lead to anything else.
Before the restaurant, I got picked up by Kim, and after the restaurant, he dropped me off. It was almost 2 hours of driving total which gave us a chance to catch up on what's been happening in both of our lives. Kim told me that he is not happy right now. He has been away from his family and friends for some while. He isn't able to work as much on his research project to use AI to make breast cancer detection more accessible in poorer countries like Kenya. Due to his supervisor and his lab partner, he has to help get funding for other people's projects to fight breast cancer. He feels like a slave because he can't do what he wants without upsetting others. I told him that that's what I felt too most of my life especially in SMC. I was too scared of being alone or upsetting others and having them leave me. So I treid being as helpful and caring as much as I could to others to the point where I lost almost every little bit of personality and freewill I had. I would copy others like their hobbies or the words they used often to be better friends. I morphed my personality to be similar to them. When I was looking for new songs to listen to, I would ask others for what they listened to. That's what I have been most of my life, just a slave or a pet. In 7th grade, that's what I was, a pet. An older upperclassmate made me her pet. She was a lot taller and older than me. She had glasses and she also had a boyfriend. She treated me like her pet by patting my head and rubbing my cheeks. When I was a kid in kindergarten, my teacher used to take me to her home and friends because I was cute. She made me pretend like I was her kid. Back then, I didn't care that much but looking back now, it horrifies me. That's one of the main reasons why I don't like being called cute.
Kim told me that ever since he came to America, he has been punishing himself. He left his first girlfriend to come to America. He believed that he had to make something of this new opportunity or his loss of his relationship with her would have been for nothing. Now, he feels lost. He has worked hard for a long time. He still has his dreams of going to medical school because he has applied to it so many times thorughout his life. He doesn't know what to do now.
The only advice I gave him was to journal to help himself figure out what he really wants to do in life and not what others want him to do.
