freakishly long survey about my year. Chut's life in 2005...

1. What did you do in 2005 that you'd never done before?
the first things that come to mind are bad things…being caught in an intricate tangle of harmful habits…eating disorders, clinical depression, running to the point of experiencing seemingly irreversible knee injuries, wanting to give into hopelessness once and for all. yet here were so many good things that should not be overlooked…I think I could write four or five pages on all the new things that have been done…most of them relational. new conversations, new friends, new levels of relating to God, my family, myself. I fell in love and recovered. new job: panera. new places: Carolina, Raleigh, the Grind, Coffee Cartel, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Raleigh Art Museum, the Ackland Art Museum. new hobbies: journaling, blogging, photography (this is most prominent of all), knitting, sudoku, crocheting hats, word puzzles, kickboxing. new fears about the future: my family’s new move to North Carolina, the health of my grandparents, who are moving with us, the next three and a half years at unc, new philosophies and creeds and beliefs. New. So many things are new. Scary, confusing, exciting. New.


2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

if I had kept them, I think I would have been the first human being to do so. Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it’s the middle that counts. My resolution is not to make any more resolutions.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
no, but one of my classmates did.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No.

5. What countries did you visit?
In person: none. In my dreams: Greece, South America, Indonesia, and Norway.

6. What would you like to have in 2006 that you lacked in 2005?
a soulmate. I love my high school friends to death…jules, koo, Emily, john, Lydia. You know me: all of me, my quirks and idiosyncracies and what makes me tick and what makes me feel passionate. I want that so badly at UNC. Patience would also be a nice thing to have.

7. What date(s) from 2005 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

February 14- Karah’s 18th birthday party. I sank pretty low then...i think of it as day one of a nearly year-long depressive episode. (that I am over! thank the Lord!)
April 6- my 18th birthday. I wore pearls. Day one as an adult, day one of a hard year.
May 28- probably the peak of the year, in some ways. Graduation. I gave a speech…I love that speech (I do not say this haughtily). I’ve had to say it over and over to myself this year. “Remember your Creator in the days of your Youth.”
Early September- diagnosed with some bad stuff at the SRC. it was pretty monumental.
October 17- the start of reconciliation with some people that I love very much.
Thanksgiving- I will never forget this…I don’t think my family will either. I said some very furious things, I spoke in fire, I hurt, I hurt them. We started to heal.
New Year’s Eve- a great end to the year…a party at Joe’s…red wine, good friends, classical music, family. Laughter, joy, inebriation. It’s nice to be young.


8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
On some level, speaking in front of my entire school/extended family of my classmates at graduation. Salutatorian doesn’t mean anything, the grades don’t mean anything, but standing in front of everyone does. I experienced a new Courtney: an assertive Courtney, a Courtney who had an affinity for writing and speaking her mind. It was then that I discovered that I have something to say, I have a voice in this world, and I would like to be heard.
On a deeper level, I think my biggest achievement was admitting that I was screwed up in many ways and needed help. and forgiveness.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Refusing to love. blaming my own insecurities/pain/spiritual crisis on the rest of my family. I am sorry.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
too many. mostly emotional, actually. to be frank: eating problems, overexercising problems, insomnia, depression. I am healing, I am stronger.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
yarn. In January I taught myself how to crochet an intricate scarf. I like to create.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
-my friends. John, for sticking with me, Jules for letting me cry, Emily, for letting me rest, Joe, for letting me do all of the above. My family, for listening and loving me in the only way that they know.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
-all of my family members. My own. UNC classmates, the universal world. A perspective change is in progress. Love is working…healing.

14. Where did most of your money go?
-food, sadly enough. Coffee.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
-mostly things that I conversely got really depressed about, as well. Life is ironic.
-new beginnings, new friends, new classes, new major (photojournalism!!!)...and then when I got scared and annoyed with all the new things…I got really excited about old things. old friends, old childhood memories, old things to latch onto.


16. What song will always remind you of 2005?
I actually have monthly songs (thank you, isochronic), but I will only put a few here:

Smashing Pumpkins: “Crestfallen”
Keane “Everybody’s Changing”
Coldplay “Fix you”
Ohio “Redemption”
Killers…some song whose title I don’t know. I danced to it at a wedding with my sister. it was one of the happiest days of the whole year. I won’t ever forget it.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier? maybe not happier…but more content. I am living in reality…not ignoring my own pain, my family’s problems, other relational problems (as much).

ii. thinner or fatter? definitely fatter. 15 pounds fatter. hahaha. freshmen fifteen has new connotations for me…but I was supposed to, so there! 

iii. richer or poorer? richer in love (awww). poorer financially. so poor that my whole extended family is moving. gotta love financial aide…

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?

volunteer, speak Spanish, work at bread co, get to know more people, done more stuff in the city.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?

exercise, cry, sulk, mope, complain, binge, sleep, write in my journal, spend time with myself.

20. How will you be spending Christmas/New Year’s Eve?

Christmas: with truckers (aka my daddy and his driver pal Matt), eating with family/opening presents with family. then my sister and I went to joe’s and I got a plant.

New Year’s: nice red wine, good brie, my sister and joe, good friends, one designated driver. enough said. It was grand.

22. Did you fall in love in 2005?
“Courtney, I can’t be your romantic outlook. You will be fine; I will be fine. I love you.” that is love.
it happened in a day…and I’ve been better ever since.

23. How many one-night stands?
ningun.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
GREY’S ANATOMY, BABY! Gilmore girls, that 70’s show, and arrested development are also favorites.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
hatred is hurtful.

26. What was the best book you read?
Nonfiction: Searching for God Knows What.
Fiction: 100 Years of Solitude.
Required Reading: White Like Me and the Accidental Asian
Nonrequired Reading: HAHA. Dave egger’s Non-Required Reading. I have yet to finish it…

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I fell out of love with piano and i’m still trying to make peace with that. I’m starting to rediscover the joys of music. I definitely owe Julie and Lydia my thanks for immersing me into the world of real (as opposed to ‘pop’) music. Joni Mitchell, Ohio, Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins, David Gray, Wilco, Jeff Buckley, the list goes ever on.
28. What did you want and get?
-spontaneity
-growing up (it came too fast)
-a deeper level of relating to family
-a major (photojournalism!!!!)

29. What did you want and not get?
a lot. pretty superficial things, as well. a nicer body, a boyfriend, a passion, structure, routine, the picture-perfect freshmen year, a roommate, being “fixed” in every area of my life.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
wow…a lot. the first few that come to mind: first and foremost, sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (jules=tibby, karah=the blonde girl (what’s her name??), em=Carmen, chut=lena). also: Junebug, Narnia, L’auberge espagnole

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
--I wore pearls! I brought my camera to school, took pictures during physics class of me and john, ate dinner at Café Napoli with my mom and dad, and received a leather-bound journal from my mom with Italian writing on the cover. I was eighteen.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
-at first I just wanted all of my problems to go away. I tried to fix them myself…it left me even more wounded than before. I guess if I could relive the year, I would have liked to spend more time with my friends and I would have liked to gotten to know more people…I like seeing people in a new light. I didn’t give my classmates a chance, I didn’t give my family a chance, and I didn’t really give myself a chance.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2005?
it evolved drastically (with my evolving mood)
February: 15% punkish and 85% comfortable. torn jeans, tights, and converses were musts.
April: mostly normal/slightly preppy. polo t-shirts, pearls, and (eep!) heels.
Summer: tanktops and baggy jeans. Work-out clothes, because (sadly) that’s pretty much all I did. I dressed up a whole lot more in the evenings. makeup became a new staple. and jewelry.
Fall: college clothing. UNC sweatshirts, jeans, and that’s about it. Yuck.
Christmas: SCARVES AND HATS!!!!! woohoo….


34. What kept you sane?
old friends (jules, Emily, and john mostly), joe, ben inman, RUF leaders (burress, ben, and others), new friends (laura fletcher). the cell phone assisted in a lot of this…

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most
George Thampy

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
--the French riots. thanks to my sociology 22 class… aversive discrimination/institutional racism. it’s a much more pervasive problem than I realized. I can see it in my own life/upbringing/schooling.

37. Who did you miss?
-the 17-year-old Courtney from Spain
-Rosario/Kim
-people from my past (like colleen said…my memories of people, ignoring how they were changing)
-God
-high school friends
-my family (or an idealized concept of my family?) I’m still working on this one…pray for love.

Question #38 has spontaneously ceased to exist. We're sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2005?

it can probably be summed up in the Rashomon perspective. (Is it dorky to apply a school concept to your life???). Basically, the Rashomon perspective states that we all have different backgrounds, experiences, opinions, and beliefs that shape who we are. It’s somewhat relativistic, but I think it is something that I have never really taken to heart. I can’t assume that MY circumstances are universal circumstances. And I can’t assume that other people’s opinions/backgrounds are “worse” or not as legitimate as mine. Consciousness. Here’s a quote from “atonement” by ian mcewan that sort of sparked my own paradigm shift:
“A second though always followed the first, one myswtery bred another: was everyone else really as alive as she was? For example, did her sister really matter to herself, was she as valuable to herself as Briony was? was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony? Did her sister also have a real self concealed behind a breaking wave, and did she spend time thinking about it, with a finger held up to her face? Did everybody? If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense…”

More profoundly: “It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
this song is hands-down one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. Ever time I listen to it I want to cry or dance or just sit in my car with the volume cranked up, just feeling the music. the orchestra…the piano…her voice. and the lyrics…
This is my song of 2005. it doesn’t have to be my life song, either. that’s nice.

Changes Come

Changes come
Turn my world around
I have my father's hand
I have my mother's tongue
I look for redemption in everyone
I wanna wear your ring
I have a song to sing
It ain't over babe
In fact it's just begun
Changes come
Turn my world around
Changes come
Bring the whole thing down
I wanna have our baby
Somedays I think that maybe
This ol' world's too fucked up
For any firstborn son
There is all this untouched beauty
The light the dark both running through me
Is there still redemption for anyone
Jesus come
Turn the world around
Lay my burden down
Turn this world around
Bring the whole thing down
Bring it down