lots of thoughts

NOTE: this has been edited on 6/6/2010; apparently more people read this than I thought & I've heard from more than one person how they've read this far back. Since I thought this was going to be a little more of a personal thing when I started writing, I've taken out & tweaked some of this because I'm just not comfortable w/ people I'm not close w/ knowing this much about me.



okay so i guess i lied in the last post where i said i would make my next post (AKA this one) happy.

lately, i've been thinking a lot about life, death, health, & family. only two of my friends know that my grandma passed away last week. i'm sad about it, but it's hard to be devastated because i've seen the woman three times in my life. i feel like i should be a bad person since she is my grandma & all, but i feel even worse that i'm almost forcing myself to feel sad. i guess i just can't relate to her, & for that matter, the rest of my family. which is what makes me feel worse more than her death. i feel for my family back there because they just lost some one & i know they're sad but at the same time (confession: i'm more sad knowing that my cousins are hurting than i am for my Grandma's passing), when i look at the situation, i see something completely different from them...most likely because i never really knew her or had to take care of her.
my Grandma (is it bad i don't even know her name??) has had a number of health conditions & her health has been deteriorating slowly over the last decade & it's caused her a great deal of pain & increased her dependence on my cousins, aunts, and uncles. so the way i see it, she died peacefully & i think given her long life, it's been the best way to go. if she did come out of her coma, there would be a number of obstacles to face...but honestly, for what? her quality of life would be drastically decreased-unable to walk & legally blind. in America, they aren't big factors, but in Malaysia, the culture's completely different.

which then makes me wonder when really is the point where some one should keep fighting death? i always saw when the quality of life has drastically decreased, but what exactly is that threshold? If you're somewhat close to me, you'll know what my dad's health is like but it never had a huge impact on me, even when i was told by my parents at 11 to expect my dad's death by the time I turned 13. However, recently I've come to realize what it's really like: he's putting himself through hell, fighting to stay alive. Behind closed doors, he's miserable. it hurts me to see him so unhappy. i know what's going on but i don't know how to change. i don't know how i'm supposed to feel about myself because i know what goes on at home but i haven't done much to make things better, which is something i'm trying to figure out why. paradoxal, i know, i don't understand it myself. It hurts me so much to see him like this, but when I go home it's so hard not to snap. being patient & taking shit is not my forte & i wish i could be a better person. i don't want to lose him just yet, but at the same time, i see that the signs are there. logic tells me that he should go, but i can't imagine my life w/o him. it's selfish as fuck, but i don't want him to pass before i have the chance to prove to him that i did turn out okay. i don't even know how to tell my dad any of this, he doesn't think this stuff affects me very much & i'm scared that if i do tell him how i feel, he's going to see how much it really does that he's going to stop telling me how he feels. something i may regret later? definitely, but i don't know how to go about everything, we aren't a family that shares these kinds of feelings. fail.
(this is choppy & doesn't make much sense after being edited, but I don't care)

Mortality overall has made me think about family a ton too, like what's going to happen once my dad & mom die. i don't want to lose contact w/ my cousins because i don't even know them & that seems really wrong to me. they ARE my family after all, but i know more about people that were complete strangers to me in the beginning of the year than my cousins, aunts, & uncles. combined. it really bothers me, maybe i shouldn't feel so bad since we're halfway around the world and for the most part, there's a huge language barrier, but i always loop back to the thought, "but they're family."
bringing me to another point, what really makes a family? i know technically it's people of the same gene pool blah blah, but what kind of factors actually make a group of people of the same lineage a family? i've been thinking about this for years now, especially because of the nature of my immediate family. i'm not going to elaborate on it here, it's the internet & i'm not comfortable w/ people knowing a ton about me. but i guess that's the beauty of blogging, it's such a useful tool to see how people think because they spill their thoughts here because they aren't intimately talking w/ some one so they don't hold back. (though once again, I could be taking this & myself way too seriously)

i can't really smoothly connect this next thought process to the above, but here it is: my health & my view of death. There are a number of health problems that run in my family that have shown up in successive generations that worry me. granted, i've had the opportunity of growing up in a completely different environment than the rest of my family. i know i'm only 19, but i can't help but worry. i've heard so much about the different problems my family members have had, the earliest starting at the age I am now. i can't help but wonder if i'll be next & how much time i have before then. so i guess that was the intro to what i really wanted to talk about. if some life threatening disease is meant to happen, it's going to happen. i'm not going to obsess if today's the day or dumb stuff like that-people die all the time from performing everyday tasks. i guess it's more like i wonder how old i'll be, & how i find out. like if i'm diagnosed when i'm at a stage that's difficult to treat & would cause lots of suffering & a decrease quality of life or just to die. or if i really want to know if i do have a disease or if i do, how long i have to live. basically coming down to: would i rather live life dying or dying knowing how much longer i have to live? i have a feeling i won't be able to answer this one for a while.

i think that's it for now, i hope everyone does well on their finals (:
yes, i know, it's really random & out there, but it's getting to be that time of the year