breakthesky.neti'll break the sky, for you and i are going nowhere.

In the two months of 2010 that have passed, I think I’ve learned more about how to detoxify my life than I did in the last eighteen years.

Gone are traitorous best friends. Gone are dirty lying ex-boyfriends that waffle between wanting to transition into becoming friends after the breakup and getting back together. Gone are all the relationships in my life that I have been hanging onto for far too long without practical reason.

I am a strong and independent woman who deserves care, respect, and honesty. If the people in my life can’t give me those things, then I don’t see why I should keep them around.

I know who I am, I know what I want, and I know how I want to live my life. If I hang onto all of these relationships that cause me nothing but pain and hurt and hold me back from achieving my full potential, I am not going to get anywhere in life.

I can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen.

It’s time for me to finally free myself from the boundaries my ex-friends and ex-boyfriends have managed to set for me post-friendship/relationship breakup and cut them out of my life. I need to detoxify from the poisonous effects of maintaining relationships with these people. I refuse deal with other people’s crap anymore for the sake of sentimental reasons; it’s time to be practical and move on.

While many of the guesses as to what happened were very creative, none of them were actually close to the mark. But a common theme was the language ability of myself and the three boys, so I should say that I, as well as the boys, all have an intermediate working knowledge of Mandarin.

I’m not sure how well I will tell this story seeing as there’s a bit of a backstory to explain, but I’ll do my best. It’s also quite convoluted and bizarre!

Next year, I want to study abroad in Beijing on a year-long program. I have three guy friends that, as of now, are also planning on participating in the program. Two of the three (Boy 1 and Boy 2) will only be studying abroad in Beijing in the fall, while the other (Boy 3) is also going to be there for a year. Boy 1 and Boy 2 are friends and I have known them since the first day of Chinese class freshman year. Boy 3 does not know the other boys and I have only known him since the beginning of this semester.

In the Beijing study abroad program, there are two options for study: a regular track or a language immersion track. In the regular track, you take classes taught in English about Chinese history, politics, economics, etc. In addition, you can take a Chinese language course on top of the English-taught classes. In the language immersion track, you only study Chinese. It’s an intensive program that really focuses on learning and using the language; students in the program usually are housed together and pledge to speak only Chinese during the course of the immersion. This pledge might interfere with how social immersion students are with the regular students as it has the potential to create a language barrier depending on the individuals’ level of spoken Chinese.

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I never once imagined I’d be shouting “Don’t leave me! Come back, come back!” in an overcrowded dining area as one of my friends left me. You know how when people pretend to walk away from you just to make a point? Well, those people usually come back after taking a few steps away from you. This friend, however, didn’t. He kept marching away and went out the door without a look over his shoulder.

He left me distraught by the entrance of our cafeteria, where I was getting some very strange looks from those in the middle of eating for my dramatic theatrics.

If anyone can guess what happened for said scene to occur, they get a (to be determined) prize. The answer will be revealed in my next entry.

Here are some hints about what the situation involved:

• Study abroad
• Three boys
• Speaking Chinese
• The definition of loyalty
• One increasingly distraught girl (me)

It also was actually a very amusing incident for everyone but me as I was, um, distraught, so I’m excited to see what people come up with as a plausible explanation!