I was absolutely in love with this guy for the longest time. Even after we broke up and I had been dating someone else for a couple years, I still thought that he was the perfect guy for me and that we would end up together. Read this essay he wrote about me after we met in a high school debate camp and you’ll see why:

Random Thoughts

By Me

I have a funny way of associating names with personalities and appearances. Joes are tall and bland; Michelles are cheery and energetic, making up for lack of insight with pure volume. Crystals…are strange.

During eighth grade, one of my friends, a typically pretty, sweetly innocent Monica, thought it would be hilarious if she gave me a blow-up girlfriend doll for my birthday. “Name it,” she urged me, leaning on a cracked white pillar of the English building. I just kind of stared at her. “C’mon,” she laughed. I rapidly thought of random names. “Crystal,” I muttered. Whatever. Just make her happy.

Discourse shapes reality, fuels social change and sparks grass-roots movements. Bleiker 2000. That’s the underlying paradigm of this workshop here in beautiful Potland, Oregon, where marijuana plants outnumber people. Words do have a strange power; writers can develop parallel universes, speak volumes, create lives. I’m terrible at that type of stuff. I’m really not that profound. I just try to add my own voice to things, just try to re-tell reality.

When I entered high school, there was a junior named Crystal. She wore about enough makeup to suffocate a dog and had a work ethic that was challenged by eating lunch. But she was nice enough, albeit slightly strange. Crystals must be slightly fucked up, I thought.

High school is funny. So are teenagers. The slightest crisis will put us over the edge; we create our own problems that in turn threaten to swallow us whole. Bloody love. That four letter word that destroys nations and consumes lives, especially those of us high schoolers.

Cynicism- it’s a concept that’s highly overused. I was probably the epitome of teenage cynicism. I guess it comes with being Asian, with hellaciously Asian parents. Happiness, love, blah blah blah. Birthdays? Dude. One of my earliest childhood memories is my mom screaming, “DON’T SAY THAT I CALLED YOU STUPID. YOU’RE SO STUPID. I’D NEVER SAY THAT!!”

One day, one of my friends told me, “One day, you’re going to fall in love and be insanely happy. You’re not truly cynical, you’ve just been taught to be that way.” I nodded at her. I hoped, but I wasn’t so sure.

I hate writing all poetically, with hidden and profound messages. Some masterful writers are able to pull it off beautifully- Hemingway’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” for example, is simply written but represents so much more. Me, I’m not that complicated or intelligent. I just tell it how it is.

I’m not some brilliant philosopher, some insightful analyzer of teenage thought. After all, I’m just 16 myself. And as hell would have it, I’ve fallen into my own self-marked trap of high school romance and drama. I’ve seen Crystals blossom from weird make-up machines to beauty. I’ve seen cynicism wither away until I can hardly remember that it ever existed.

I’m sure your friends will give me shit if they see this, but whoop-de-fucking-do. I’ve met some ridiculously gorgeous people, some disgustingly intelligent students, some obscenely sweet souls. But I’ve never seen anyone as purely, simply, honestly beautiful as you. I’ve never missed so one so much, never had anyone dominate my thoughts and actions the way my longing for you has. Fuckin’ a. I just need to see you again. At random parts of the day, I’ll play one of your messages that I’ve heard a thousand times just so I can hear your voice.

Crystal Yuan Zheng. I never thought I’d feel this way about anyone.

I found this email that I sent to my friend over summer of 2008.  Sigh, kids..

from: Crystal
date: Sat, Jul 5, 2008 at 9:27 AM
subject:  complaints about my love life…

this email is to complain about my sucky and non-existant love life.

So A__ dumped my ass two weeks ago and I haven’t talked to him since. And then I started becoming obsessed with J__ again..so I hung out a lot with him and we were sort of intimate with eachother – not like kissing and making out but more like hugging/cuddling/holding in eachothers arms. anyway – well i thought it was really cute and romantic and he even said that he wanted to kiss me! but then he was like

i actually don’t like you…so i’m like wtf? im so confused! Why did you do all those things – and he was just like Oh I like to do that with girls.

anyway – well it shouldnt matter right because i left for China the next day, but I keep getting distracted by him and unable to concentrate on my research! Like, i will wake up in the middle of the night, hoping to catch him on AIM, or I will call my house between 3 and 5, when I know he is tutoring my brother there…

But whenever I talk to him he just doesnt act very nice to me… so I’m trying to forget about him… and who knows if i even really like him anyway – perhaps its just rebounds…

so then I met up with this guy i barely knew, met once when he was visiting stanford, but he goes to Beijing University. I met him two days ago to just eat and hang out, but then he kept inviting me to do things, like play cards, go karaoke, go to a bar with friends, and actually – I like him and hes really cute…plus he is going to stanford next year as a masters student, so there is actual potential here, as opposed to with J__! But he’s leaving for Shanghai tomorrow…which means my need for immediate affection would have to be staved off for 3 months…

Last of all – When i was complaining about how no one wants to date me, M___ asked me out! haha – well hes kinda doing it as a pity joke, but still, we are nominally boyfriend and girlfriend. But my conditions were that I could date as many other people as i like in the  meantime, and also that i could dump him with no consequences – and he said ok. Dang – haha it makes me want to laugh!
So that is my pathetic love life….im such a loser…

When I started this academic quarter, I wanted a fresh beginning. I broke up with my boyfriend who I had been dating for the first quarter, and was determined to handle the break-up better than I had handled my previous one. In most aspects, I really am proud of myself for my emotional maturity. I reached out to my friends and made new friends; I started exercising and eating healthy; I joined the chorus; I took the hardest and most classes and excelled at them; I started to feel better and better about myself each day.

But there is one part of me where I still haven’t grown up, and that is when it comes to guys. I let my mood and my self-esteem depend too much on the guys that I like. To start, if I don’t have a guy in mind, then I feel very empty, like I don’t have anything to govern my behavior. Thus, if I don’t like a guy anymore immediately I have to find a new target. I can’t be satisfied just being my own single self. If my crush doesn’t like me back, it makes me feel unattractive and worthless.

When I confessed my feelings to my current crush, I thought that nothing would change. I thought we could still be friends, but as the weeks went on, everything became more and more awkward. Every time I talk to him, I feel as if he might think that I’m just trying to get him to like me. I definitely spent much more time together with him before. Once my roommate told him that he should come to hang out in our room more often, and he agreed; he never once came to hang out in our room, but I always saw him in the room across the hall from me. Over spring break, I am living in the room next to his because I had to move out of mine. I always go say hi to him and his roommate, but he will never come talk to me. It’s not so hard is it? I even made it easier by moving to a room closer to his. Sometimes he is super nice to me, and others he just ignores me. It  pisses me off when people are rude to others, regardless of the feelings between them. One time I confessed to one of my best friends from home that I liked him, and he decided to ignore me for two months. Why should you treat a friend differently just because they happen to like you? I think I learned my lesson; despite everyone applauding brave girls who just are straightforward about their feelings, I don’t advise it if you still want to remain friends with the person.

The first day of class I had Chinese lit and Chinese rituals back to back through lunch on Tuesday. I noticed this cute guy in both of those classes, and we introduced ourselves after class. Since both of us hadn’t had lunch, I asked him if he wanted to eat together, and we had a great conversation over lunch. We found out that we have very similar interests; he is a Chinese major and wants to go into Chinese medicine, while I want to practice Western medicine in China. Thinking that we could make getting lunch a weekly tradition, I was looking forward to the next Tuesday, but he just left class quickly without saying anything to me. I decided to give him up. One time after class we happened to be chatting next to our bikes, and remembering how much I enjoyed our conversations, I asked if he wanted to grab lunch. He said he had to go, but that we would get lunch next week. Next Tuesday, I excitedly made myself look nicer in anticipation of our lunch; he didn’t come to class. Thinking he was sick, I forgave him. Next class, he never mentioned it. Not one “sorry I was sick”, “I forgot”, or “can we re-schedule?” I decided he was a douchebag. Last day of class, he runs up to me to give me my wallet which I had forgotten in class, and we start chatting again. Stupidly, I asked if he wanted to get lunch and he said yes, but this week was bad can we try for next week after finals? When I called him, he said he had too much work, and already had dinner plans for all the meals until he left for break. He was surprised to hear from me and didn’t even seem to remember what he said last week. He said, “we’ll definitely get together when I come back from break”. Yeah right. I’m not going to call him again.

There was another person that I liked this quarter. For a month, whenever I went out the dorm I would walk down the hall past his room (even if it was out of my way), or I would go visit my friends in that side of the dorm, to increase the chance of bumping into him. If I heard his voice in the lounge I would go and pretend to be going to the dining hall. Sometimes he was really nice to me and others, he would be very unfriendly. I quickly got over him because I knew that he just didn’t care about me, but then every time he was nice I forgot and the cycle would start all over again. He would lean against me, tickle and poke me, and give me all these signs to make me think that he liked me. But I quickly found out that he is just a very touchy-feely person. He also only ever hung out with me when my friend from high school was visiting.  I lost interest in him and started to like the other guy who also doesn’t like me back.

I know that I should have self-confidence, and that is what guys find attractive. I know that I should love myself before I can expect others to love me. But when you go from being interested in guy to guy to guy, and none of them find you attractive, how can you tell yourself that you are attractive? It’s so easy to think, “nobody likes me”. It’s so easy to feel lonely. I just wish I could be independent and feel good about myself again.

Sorry if this blog post is a little less coherent and a bit more rambling than usual. I tried to not impede the flow of my thoughts and just wrote down whatever I was thinking.

I just gave My Crush a gift I bought from China. He didn’t even say thank you.

I think I’m slipping back into temporary depression. All my friends have left, I won’t see them again for 6 months because I’m studying abroad in Oxford next quarter. This quarter I got to know My Crush really well and we became friends, but I think I undid all of that by telling him I like him and now things are super awkward. I think its impossible for two people to maintain a purely friendship relationship if one of the parties has feelings for the other. I guess I just feel like I don’t really matter to anyone. That I can just leave, and no one really cares that they won’t see me for a long time.

Is there even anyone at school that really cares about me? I feel like I don’t have any really genuine friends here. I can’t think of anyone at school who I would call if I ran into an emergency. Everyone is too tied up in their work and can hardly spare time to pencil me in to their busy schedules. Whenever I eat with anyone, I can sense them itching to leave and return to their work. Being a college student is such a lonely experience. You are surrounded by a higher concentration of similar aged peers than you will ever enjoy in your lifetime, but yet you cannot make a deep connection with a single one of them.

That’s why on a Friday night I am alone with my computer listening to the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack.

Maybe going abroad will be good for me. I will finally get out of this Stanford bubble; maybe the British  aren’t as self-absorbed as American college students.

2/2/2 bad day at work + little sleep + nobody likes me

By guest poster Alberto

I met my first girlfriend in freshman biology class. I believe the first thing she had ever asked me was if she could have some of my sandwich. Looking back, that’s the kind of question I expect of her.

Months later she would always ask me for help, at first with biology stuff, but then later with computer science questions. I was obliged to help of course, and to this day it is difficult for me to refuse to help someone out. In any event, we would talk more and more over AIM to the point where I would stupidly stay up all night talking. We would at one point start talking on the phone more and more often, and that’s pretty much how the feelings started developing.

I wasn’t sure why I liked her, and I was pretty naïve at the time and didn’t realize that she liked me. Eventually a friend asked me why I didn’t ask her out already, and that it was pretty clear that we both liked each other. Seeing as I had never had a girlfriend before, I was plenty nervous about doing so. Besides, I didn’t even know at the time how to do so. Do you simply ask a girl if she wants to be your girlfriend? Yes, but only in middle school or younger.

After we started going out… nothing happened. Nothing. If anything things got more and more awkward. The whole ordeal lasted two weeks, exactly. No date, nothing physical, nothing at all. I was plenty oblivious to the fact that everything was wrong and not going the way they should when two people go out. So, when she told me that it wasn’t working out, I freaked. This was followed by stupid dialog on my part, followed by stupid non-dialog for at least a year, probably more.

Looking back, I learned valuable lessons about what to do and what not to do. Could it have been less awkward? I’m not sure. I never suggested a date nor anything romantic, which was due to my extreme lack of being able to express myself at the time. Should I have stopped talking for a year and avoiding her? Definitely not. That was merely an immature reaction to the situation and fairly uncalled for.

Now we are good friends. This past experience is but a mere joke at this point, and I’m glad it at least turned out that way.

If you have no idea who my first girlfriend was because you can’t figure it out, then you need to… probably punch yourself.

Two words you never want to hear someone say after you tell them, “I like you”.

For our “Screw Your Roommate” (you set your roommate up on a blind date) ice-skating event, my ever-thoughtful roommate set me up with My Crush.

During the first quarter of the school year, I spent all my time with my boyfriend and completely dismissed the need to make other friends in my dorm. After I broke up with my him, I was determined to not let the break-up get me down. I deliberately forced myself out of my room to meet and socialize with other dorm-mates [I must boast that, on this one goal I passed with flying colors]. On one of those days, I happened to stumble into the room inhabited by a pair of Asian engineer guys who I vaguely remember earlier in the year confusing for one and the same person (no wonder I thought he ate a lot in the dining hall–). Immediately upon entering, My Crush offered me tea and I happily accepted, impressed by his hospitality. Expecting tea bags stolen from the dining hall, I was taken aback when he opened his drawer to showcase a collection of various teas.

“You should come to our weekly tea parties,” I laughed. I didn’t realize at the time that this chance encounter would develop into a warm friendship and later, romantic feelings.

“It’s so great to be single!” I declared to my roommate upon returning. “You can meet so many more friends!”

Sometimes I think he is too cool for me. My Crush is a stereotypical engineer: smart, hard working, logical (he’s the one who made the comment about the Chocolate Soulmates). But he is also not the stereotypical engineer: he likes biking, photography, and classical music. I often see him in the hallways fixing bikes. I decided to cool down my feelings for him because I decided that he was too busy to date. Meanwhile, we continued to meet weekly and get to know each other better over tea.

“Your roommate just walked in and asked me to go with you. I’m sure if my roommate was there instead of me, she would have asked him instead,” My Crush explained to me as we circled the rink; I was skating backwards holding his hands to support him and while he was barely keeping his balance.

“Actually, I should tell you that the reason she asked you is because I like you,” I confessed.

“Uh Oh”.

Mood: 8 on an emotional high, laughing with friends, telling stories, girly crush feelings

Physical tiredness: 9 completely alert… this is bad, considering I’m trying to fall asleep

Spiritual tiredness: 5 who can think about these kind of things when you’ve got a crush?

This is the 3rd chapter of the Migrant Worker thread. Read the 2nd Chapter.

I scored a front row ticket to the Closing Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics this summer. Going by myself, yet eager to take lots of pictures inside the Bird’s Nest, I borrowed a camera tripod to set up auto-picture-taking.  A security line surrounded the Nest a few miles out, so no one without a ticket could enter, and those with tickets had to talk a good 45 minutes (I made it in 30 because I was power-walking) until they reached the stadium. I arrived at the security check-in point next to the stadium forty minutes before start time, only to find out that camera tripods were not allowed in. I tried every trick in the book: sweet-talking the male student volunteer, pretending to be a dumb foreigner, being an angry bitch. Despite my protests, the volunteers told me my only options were to either chuck it or walk back outside the security line to find a hotel that could check it for me.

Seeing as how the tripod was borrowed, I could not throw it away, so I turned around and started on my trek outwards. Twenty minutes out I approached a fancy-hotel-ish-looking building and asked the policemen on guard if I could check things there. They told me no, the closest place would be outside the security line. When I asked how much checking it at a hotel would be, they relied, “100 [RMB]”. Running out of time and breath, I called my friend to ask how much the tripod was; her response: “65RMB”. Some quick math told me that paying 100RMB to store a 65RMB object was not right, and exasperated, I told her my situation and asked if I could buy her a new one instead. At that moment, a policeman, I suppose out of pity for a single frantic girl, offered to hold on to it for me until the end of the ceremony. I just had to meet him back at the exact same spot immediately after it ended. I grabbed his number and headed back.

Great, I run back towards the stadium and arrive with time to spare. I snap some photos sporting my Olympic and Chinese patriotic gear, and ask some foreigners to sign my Olympic guestbook (using my fake Chinese accent to speak English so I sound like a cute Chinese obsessed with foreigners).  I head on over to my great seat and watch the show progress, seeing up close Yao Ming’s towering ogre of a figure. The show ends and I start to head back to where I met the policeman, only (I should’ve seen this one coming) my horrible sense of direction and memory lead me 15 minutes down the wrong street. By the time I arrive at the spot, the policemen have all moved to their next shift location, and I have no choice but to take a taxi to their new shift.

Arriving at the Museum of Science and Technology past midnight, I look around but don’t see anyone. The entire area is deserted and the only sounds were the humming of cars on the highway. I call him to tell him my exact location: in front of the main gate on a rock, wearing a white skirt. At first, in the silence, I hear footsteps approaching, and then I can make out a tall plain-clothes man walking towards me. Our eyes meet but we do not know for sure if we are right people that we are looking for; in the darkness and rush of our first meeting, we didn’t really get a deep impression of each other’s appearance.

“Hi, are you the girl here for the tripod?”
“Yes, that’s me”
“Here you go”
“Thanks so much, I really appreciate it”
“How are you getting home?”
“Metro”
“So late at night? That’s not safe for a girl like you traveling alone. We can send you home in our police car”

And so he sent me home, all the while chatting about our lives. I usually never tell Chinese that I am actually American, but I felt like I could trust him (he is, after all, a policeman). He was also quite cute, and when I chat with cute guys, I naturally can’t stop smiling during the entire conversation. After I arrived home though, I never thought that I would see him again.

The next day, I receive a phone call from his number.

“Hi, do you remember me?”
“Of course I remember you!”
“I just realized that I never even asked for your name”
“Oh, I am Crystal”
“My name is LYK”
“How long are you going to be in China? I hope to have more opportunities to chat with you”
“I am actually leaving for Wuhan today, but I will be back in two weeks”

Two weeks later, I call him to let him know I was back. Every few days I would receive a call from him just to chat for hours.  We talked about our childhood, jobs, the U.S., China, our past, our present, our future, just everything about our lives. I was really giddy – I mean, a policeman was interested in ME! Flirting is a universal language afterall. I had an extra ticket to paralympics wheelchair basketball, and I had been looking for an excuse to see him again, so I invited him to come with me. The conversation gradually shifted to the Olympics, and I asked him if aside from security work, had he ever been inside the Bird’s Nest.

“Yes, I went last week, but we didn’t get to spend much time there because we had to hurry home”
“Oh, how come?
“My mother-in-law wanted us back”

I felt like an anvil had dropped and crushed my pride. I had spent the past few weeks flirting with a married man?

“Oh.” [silence]

He must’ve sensed my shock and understood why, because the next thing he asked me was, “How old did you think I was?”

Asian men look younger than they are, a lesson I learned the hard way. He was a married, 35 year old man, who for some reason or other, wanted to make friends with a 20 year old college student.

What does this have to do with the migrant worker, you may ask? Recall that for the entire week I had been avoiding the migrant worker because I was more interested in the policeman. After this phone call, I was so upset that I called up the migrant worker and invited him to dinner.

Mood: 7 just ate dinner and helped one of my students with his lab report, had my weekly tea party with friends

Physical tiredness: 5 slept at 4 am last night, but woke up at 1:30, so haven’t been awake very long

Spiritual tiredness: 4 finally made some long term progress today, turned in my major grant proposal

Love. That little word with the most power per letter in the English language.

What I like most about Valentine’s Day is that it gives you the opportunity to show the people you love the most how much they mean to you. Even more so than Christmas, Valentine’s Day is all about giving. I gave my best friends roses and serenaded my roommate with a strip tease while singing “No One” by Alicia Keys (I think she was more embarrassed than I was). Saturday morning, I opened the door to find gifts lying at me feet: brownies and a love song CD from the freshmen in our dorm, and three unsigned roses. All day I could not suppress a mysterious smile as I wondered to myself who the sender of those roses was.

My Vday Outfit

My parents let me buy myself a dress as a Valentine’s Day gift, and I hesitantly told them it cost 300$, expecting them to order me to return it immediately. Surprisingly, they were so happy that I had finally bought myself something valuable and could not wait to see pictures. My parents are so cute, I don’t know anyone else whose parents buy them Valentines Day presents.

Something about Valentine’s Day blocks out sadness and fills everyone with happiness. I spent the day with one of my best childhood friends who lived down my street back home. Seeing old friends triggers something comfortable, and I couldn’t stop smiling, singing, and dancing all day. While waiting for the bus, I taught him to waltz and swing, and we choreographed a dance to the Beach Boys’ “Do you wanna dance”. For one weekend, I felt like I finally had someone at school that I could call a true friend. As he walked away in the rain, and his dark blue jacket disappeared into the night, I couldn’t help feeling like I had lost something. It was like my only genuine friend was leaving me behind in the college cesspool of self-absorbed, superficial relationships.

My friend and I were wondering whether Valentine’s Day was purely a marketing gimmick invention of the chocolate industry. If it was, they are pure geniuses and deserve everybody’s gratitude for devising such a great holiday. I’m going to take this opportunity to pat myself on the back for surviving my first single Valentine’s in five years. I never did find a Valentine, but I did learn that in my life there are people who care about me; and that is good enough for me.

What does Valentine’s Day mean to you? How did you spend it?

I got to know him because I had been asking him for help in freshman biology class everyday in high school. Sometimes after we talked about bio, we would chat about other random stuff – once we talked on the phone through the entire night until he had to leave to catch the bus at 6:30 in the morning. Another time we had a long bio assignment due the next day and we agreed to take turns sleeping in hour intervals, work on the homework, and then collaborate at the end. However, when it reached the agreed upon time to give him his wake-up call, his dad answered the phone and yelled at me.  (I still am not that partial to his dad even now…)

I still remember the day that he asked me out. It was the end of the school day and we were all walking to our busses. He approached me and suddenly and awkwardly asked, “Will you be my girlfriend?” I wasn’t that surprised because it was obvious that we liked each other, but I had no idea how to react in this situation. I just responded, “yes” with a large, insuppressible smile on my face, and turned immediately without saying goodbye to run to my bus.

I thought that now that we were officially dating, everything would get so much better. But it didn’t. Everything just became really awkward. We look at each other and in my mind I’m thinking, “Are we supposed to be holding hands? How do I act like your girlfriend?”. We never held hands. Okay, maybe once. But I was even more touchy-feely with my other guy friends than I was with my boyfriend.  Then I didn’t know what to say to him and started avoiding him. He would follow me around when I tried to get away. In the end, I couldn’t stand it anymore and turned around and told him, “I don’t think it’s working out”. He told me, “I don’t think I will ever love anyone else”, and proceeded to stop talking to me for a year.

We are now best friends, and we look back at this time and laugh. Aren’t middle school and high school relationships so funny when we think back on them? Share your first boyfriend/girlfriend story!

We all deserve to be loved

It is 1:19am on February 6th, which means I have exactly 7 days, 22 hours, and 41 minutes to find a date for Valentine’s day. Otherwise, I will be able to proudly mark 2009 as the first time I’ll be spending a Valentine’s Day single since I had my first boyfriend. In that case, I will call a girls’ night out, ask my roommate out on a date, and eat a romantic dinner followed by the new “He’s just not that into you” movie. Although I promised my roommate a Valentine’s Day date, she still remains doubtful that I will follow through because she believes that I am a siren with a magical ability to bewitch men.  Having lived with me for the past two years, she has heard all my guy stories that she can now recite them to eager new audiences. In fact, she is so confident in my powers that she predicts I will have a breakfast, lunch, and dinner date, each with different men, and she has already arranged alternate plans. Yet, so far, no lucky guy has ventured to ask me to be his Valentine.
During a late night conversation tonight with my hallmates, I lost my voice because we were laughing so much while my roommate and I were entertaining them with my guy stories. I don’t tell these stories to brag, it’s just that they’re the only entertaining part about my life. They were all trying to answer the question – what is it about me that attracts so many guys – when someone suggested that I should start a blog about my guy stories.

I am myself quite perplexed by this question. I don’t consider myself particularly attractive. Physically, I would say that I am quite average looking. I rarely bother with dressing myself up or wearing make up, so that most days I walk around as if I had just rolled out of bed. My complexion is quite bad, especially as a result of a self-destructive depressive phase during my freshman year in which I attacked my face and left it covered with scars. Although I am not fat, I do find pieces of fat bulging out due to poor eating habits – so I cannot boast a hot body.

I am a neurotic, alpha-type, uptight female with self-confidence issues, who has suffered from multiple bouts of depression in the recent past, and constantly allows my self-destructive habits to get the better end of me. I am anti-social, preferring to stay locked up in my room playing geeky online games rather than partying with classmates. Given a choice, I would rather not expend the energy to interact with people who I do not give a crap about. My mood swings from high to low at such fast paces that I don’t think even Usain Bolt could catch up. At a very superficial, cursory level, friends have described me as, as “interesting” and “ambitious”.

Of course, this blog is not only aimed to answer the question that my friends had suggested (although it was the inspiration for the blog). Yes, there are traits about me that make me attractive to others. On the flip side of the coin, there is something about me that prevents me from living life to the fullest. What exactly is the trouble with Crystal?

My hope is that through my blog, together with my readers, we can use my life as a case study to find a path to happiness. While I share my stories, of course I invite you to comment and share your stories as well!