I logged back onto this blog for the first time in months, and I’m not sure I feel like blogging here anymore. If I want to write about my personal life, it seems a diary is a more suitable place… I don’t feel comfortable with people knowing about my family details, even if they don’t know who I am besides a small part of the story, and that my name is Naoko…

Although I’m uncomfortable at the thought of writing more about my personal details, I can’t bring myself to delete what I’ve already written. But at the moment, I can’t bring myself to write any more. I guess I could turn this into a blog about all my other personal thoughts without mentioning family… but to be honest I think I will be abandoning this blog. Thanks anyone who used to read my posts, but I guess I’ll be blogging a lot less or not at all from now on.

I don’t know what to do right now, and whether it’s good I’m so task-orientated or if it’s an excuse for my heartlessness… Or whether I’m just getting worried about nothing, and there’s just a simple solution I’m not seeing.

It’s a stressful time for my family right now. My brother’s trial is next week, and we all need to stay strong for each other. Dad says he’d like to visit my grandparents’ grave “if I have time”. He knows I’ve been busy with uni lately, and it touches me how important he places my studies ahead of what he wants for himself. But I know visiting his parents’ graves would mean a lot to him; that perhaps right now he feels like he needs some strength and spiritual guidance. He’s not even a religious person, which makes this seem like an even more important thing.

He gave me a lot of time to think and plan ahead, and I decided this weekend we would go visit my brother who’s now been moved to a gaol closer to us (he used to be 3 hours away, and now only 1 hour away— which is a big difference if you consider the return trip, which is why we haven’t gone to see him in a while ><”). Then afterwards we would go visit grandma and grandpa’s grave… I knew there was the possibility of my group needing to meet up on the weekend, but I thought since we’d spent a significant amount of time on our project already (including spending 8 hours at the library last weekend), and we met up two nights this week that we might not need to…

But they’re planning to meet up again this Saturday. Although it’s not that critical I go, because we have all the work done. It’s a presentation where we’re asked questions about our project rather than pre-preparing speeches so we need to make sure everyone has a fair idea of each section of the project… I don’t want to not go and let the team down ><. Of course I can just read all our work and ask questions if I’m not sure about the parts anyone else has worked on, but I’ll still be disadvantaged. And Dad says it’s okay, and he understands if I have other things I need to do, but I don’t really need to… My group said they understood if I can’t come because I live so far away and have done a lot of work already, but I don’t know if they’re just saying that… 

Argh ><. I don’t know what to do.

I hope you know I’m thinking of you…
I’m happy that you’ve survive another year. Even though it might not feel like living…

His court trial is soon, and it will be the first court case of his I will have been to. It’s stressful, and it’s scary, but I want to be there. Logically, it shouldn’t be too stressful when we know what’s likely to happen— what he did, what the charges are, how long the sentence will likely be. Furthermore, we’ve been informed most of the original charges have been dropped as there’s not enough evidence; a lot of the evidence the police collected was illegitimately collected and therefore cannot be used in a court of law. Also through further investigation, something he was meant to originally be charged with wasn’t his— some kind of extremely deadly firearm found in the roof of the building which belonged to the landlord, and not him… His sentence should be much shorter than the many years we thought.

But maybe it doesn’t even make sense to say “logically” I shouldn’t be so affected. Logically, emotions have no logic. Logically, I’m his sister, so of course I’d be worried. Logically, he did something wrong, so I know he’s being punished, so I have double-feelings about that. I know about his background, and crime isn’t as voluntary for some people as people think it is… Of course he’s the one who committed the wrongs himself, but there’s not always a clear alternative for someone. Not that I’d result to crime, ever, as a solution. But my situation is a lot different, and I’ll never be put in the situations he’s been in.  As biased as I (naturally) am, I’m not excusing his actions. 

I just hope he’ll change, because he means a lot to me. I know if he doesn’t I’ll still be okay… I’ll just hope for the best, and no matter what happens, I’ll be supportive of him.

I haven’t been on Tumblr in a while, and I guess it’s because I’ve been having an emotionally-busy time. Or maybe just busy in general.

Well, it’s my birthday soon :). I guess it’s just another day, and being 19 isn’t that different from being 18 and 364 days old, or 19 and one day old… but the way I see it, despite how insignificant I am in the world (in the sense that I am only a small part of it; out of 7 billion people, not even 0.000001% would even know I exist, let alone think I’m very important), I still am significant to the world. There’s a lot I can do for it, in the relatively short time I live. There’s a lot I can contribute, if I’m willing to.

But is significance even that important? Who are we kidding, if we think that in our lives we don’t want to feel important. People take very different paths on their journey to achieving that importance— reputation, knowledge and skill, acceptance, finding love etc… It’s very hard to live not feeling some form of importance.

I guess sometimes I can feel important, thinking about how much I’ve grown as a person. But seeing growth is hard when people have the human tendency to compare… I often compare myself to others in a hurtful, discouraging way, but I’m learning ^^. Sometimes it helps me find the flaws I can and need to improve on, but I guess I can afford to be nicer to myself sometimes.

When thinking about importance and growth fails, at least there’s the comfort of knowing you are important to certain people. When I feel disappointed in myself, I can often tell myself to stop feeling sorry for myself when I think about how proud my parents are of me. They’re just two people getting older each day, who have trouble speaking English and not much income to support me, yet they love me, and try their best to make me happy each day. Neither of them even finished high school, and I’m possibly the only one who will finish university, seeing as my older brother is in gaol…

I’m not only important to them in the sense I may be the only hope for them to live a comfortable future when I graduate, but I know that whether or not this happens, they’ll love me. I also know that I have friends who are very supportive of me; with all the memories we’ve formed together there’s no way I could be considered insignificant to them.

Well, I guess it’s exciting, turning 19. I know it’s just another day on the calendar to most, but to me, it’s another day in my life and I can’t underestimate the significance of any moment.

I found an old diary entry, from the 14th of March, 2011. The day before the scariest and saddest day of my life so far. I didn’t even remember that I wrote this till now, but I guess it’s kind of cute. I remember there was more I was meant to write, but I didn’t get to… I remember writing this, at his house, and not wanting to leave, but I only did so, thinking I would see him in two days time…

I forgot my wallet at his house, and he called when I arrived home reminding me to pick it up. “See you on Wednesday… Good night” was the last thing I said to him…

Happy White Day—14^th March, 2011

It’s a new day, and I feel cheerful and refreshed for some reason. I know it’s silly, because nothing magical suddenly happens when the clock strikes twelve, midnight… but its White Day and a new week of uni starts today, so I’m feeling like it is a fresh start.

For some reason, I really love the idea of White Day. It makes me happy. Even though I’ve never been in a relationship, I feel happy for all the couples, who either celebrating White Day, or are simply happy together, ignorant of this Japanese (and Korean) celebration, or that don’t make a big deal of this kind of thing. By the way, I am happy to not be in a relationship at this stage, because right now my focus is to do well on uni—this is really important to me right now. 

It sounds like nothing to do with anything I just talked about, but I was thinking of my brother and his girlfriend when I wrote this. I knew they were close friends, although I’d hardly seen her, but I only discovered they were together that night. It made me happy.

Of course that night was the last time I got to see my brother before he was taken away. I know he did the wrong thing, and therefore he ‘deserves’ his punishment… but sometimes it feels like we’re the ones being punished. His trial is the day after his birthday, which is in a few weeks time… The timing is terrible. Has he ever had a decent birthday?

I can honestly say I’m scared… to know exactly how many years I won’t get to see him. I thought the trial would be further away— they said it would be some time in late November, or December, during my holidays… But instead, it’s October.  Although he says he’s glad he probably won’t get as many years as they said— there wasn’t enough evidence, and the police themselves broke some rules in the process of investigating… But five years or however many likely is still a long time. I miss my brother. Knowing I won’t see him for so long kind of breaks my heart…

But I know I can’t let it affect my studies… I’m a hard-working girl, and I can’t let my emotions get the best of me. 

Despite all the complaining about all the grey weather recently, today is a really beautiful day. It’d be a lovely day to go out for a drive and sit by the seaside (if the seats aren’t wet, or at least take a short walk around eating icecream or something).

Actually, I might do so, after Mum comes home from work. It’ll be a nice refreshment before I restart my studying.

I guess I’ve been worrying about going back to uni slightly. But seriously, dreams like these terrify me. I often have much stranger dreams, but I guess it’s the slightly more believable ones which scare me more.

I dreamt last night I got an exam paper back which seemed either incompletely marked (which has happened before, unfortunately… but only in high school). Either that, or it was so terrible the marker gave up on correcting the rest. It was only a double sided  A4 piece of paper, and the top of the paper had written in tiny, green ink ‘22’. There were a few ticks beside what I had written. Looking at the paper, I had no idea what the exam topic was, and that made me panic even more. But the answers were in my handwriting. I began counting the marks on the paper. I didn’t understand how the marks added up, but it seemed I at least had 40 ticks, so I asked if I could borrow my friend’s paper to compare how the marks added up. At the top of her paper, there was a 144/200, and I began to worry even more.

I asked the teacher if any pages were missing from the exam paper, because an A4 sheet of paper could not have possibly made up an exam worth 200 points. My friends just looked at me sadly and said, “you should know. You sat the paper yourself. Look, isn’t that your handwriting?” I told them I didn’t even remember sitting the exam. I don’t know what happened to me that day, but they didn’t believe me.

Next, I dreamt it was raining heavily, and the clouds were so dark it looked like it was the middle of a storm. I was hastily running around, packing things into my bag because I knew I was going to be late for my class. When I finally arrived, I shocked myself realising it had been half an hour since the class ended. I was still sitting in the car, in the middle of the dreary weather, with the traffic not moving an inch, so I decided to text one of my friends and ask if she could send me the notes, with an explanation of how all the bad weather and traffic stopped me from getting to class on time (or at all, in this case…) My friend texted back, “Oh, I forgot you lived so far away. It must be such a hassle having to carry such heavy books around,” and I sat there thinking, “yes, yes, but you’re not really answering my question…!”

I ended up standing on a white verandah of a tall apartment building, looking towards the left where the wild sea was making crashing noises against its own waves… The sky was still that same gloomy, dark grey and the wind was picking up all the water from the rain previously so it still felt like it was raining. I heard from the TV inside some news warning about a typhoon and tsunami (which are quite unlikely occurrences in Australia… I think we call them cyclones. But who said I was in Australia in my dream, right?) My brother suddenly walked to my right side and I asked him, “Is it okay that we’re here? Aren’t you worried?” and he said, in his usual calm voice, “No, this is a good place to live. And it’s close to your uni.”

“Yes, but it scares me.” I looked out at the surrounding tall buildings, and ours was slightly prettier than the one in front of us, but I still felt scared. It looked like daytime, but everything was still dark and grey.

“Come on, let’s go for a drive,” he said, and we walked down to his car. When he opened the door of his car, the sun was so bright, he had to squint. I had my arm over my face to block the sunlight, and he handed me a pair of sunglasses. He told me to put them on because it wasn’t good for us not to wear them. 

When I finally woke up, it was sunny and 11.30am. But it’s gone cloudy again… This crazy Australian weather.

I dreamt I was in a white room with my daughter, who was probably about thirteen years old. I closed my eyes and began to softly play the violin (which I can’t do in real life, unfortunately), and I heard gentle piano notes being played by her, and I opened my eyes and smiled to see her, back facing me, with long, wavy and very black hair. She turned around and asked me to play piano with her, so I sat beside her, and suddenly her little brother appeared at the door, with a cheeky, childish grin and asked if his older sister could help him practice his tai chi/self-defence. She looked at me, and I nodded, so she quickly got up and ran off with her brother. I was softly stroked on side of the head by someone behind me, presumably my husband, who whispered we should go and watch them.

Her brother (who was maybe ten years old) was slightly better at tai chi than her, but she made it look extremely graceful— as if she were dancing. In any of the steps she did incorrectly, her younger brother was able to help her improve, and because her brother took the sport more seriously than she did, she would soothe him when he got any injuries. I thought it was so beautiful.