11.6.03-- Doing Rash Things.

I am in a total freaking funk right now. I've been so sad for the past couple months. I can't even put my finger on it all.

I never ever like to blame emotions on PMS because I think PMS is used as a cop out to excuse yourself for abusing others or expressing your genuine feelings. (ie, I don't think it exists.) But at one point I was trying to blame the way I've been feeling on PMS. Trying to come up with some kind of point of blame.

I just saw a preview of "Masha No Home" at East West Players. It wasn't a bad play. But the whole time I was there I was like, "God, I want to go home and cry." And I was feeling really anti-social and couldn't wait to leave and go home and hide under my sheets. I get like that around big crowds of young Asian people. It's weird.

And also I was thinking all tonight, "God, I want to start smoking cigarettes."

Yes, can you believe it? I wanted to start smoking cigarettes. Tonight.

I usually hate cigarettes. I usually hate smoking. But suddenly, I just wanted to smoke packs and packs of them. Tonight.

I was in that theater thinking about where there might be some prop cigarettes in my apartment that I have from an old show or something, and then plotting how I could go drive off a few blocks from my house and find a safe street corner to smoke every cigarette I have. That way the cigarette smoke wouldn't get into my apartment if I smoke far from my house.

What the hell is my problem?

Then I was thinking of different drugs I could do. Like cocaine (nah, the snorting thing freaks me out). Or Heroin (No needles freak me out). Or pot (ugh, too tedious and stinky). But drugs are kind of out of the question because I don't know where I would buy drugs from. And I don't have any money to pay for drugs. Plus I know I would get more depressed if I did drugs. (C'mon folks, let's be real here, drugs don't make things better!)

I'm going totally nuts.

Once, my second year of college I wanted to start smoking cigarettes. I was really sad then because I hated the apartment I was living in. I had two crappy roommates who I couldn't stand. I thought, "Man! I hate this living situation so much-- that goddammit! I am going to start smoking cigarettes!"

There was one store on campus that sold cigarettes then. On South Campus where the science departments are, in this little downstairs corner of a room. I was just as methodical about planning to smoke then as I was tonight. I was thinking. Ok, I will buy them, tuck them in my pocket, leave campus quietly, and then smoke three or four of them on the way back to my apartment. So I was wandering all over South Campus trying to find this mythological store on campus that sold cigarettes. After a few students helped me out, I found it. I bought a pack of Marlboro Lights (because I wanted to start easy). A pack of cigarettes was like $4. That's so freaking expensive! Then I put them in my pocket. And I was walking off campus. I felt like I had just shoplifted or something.

Then my friend Paul Tran saw me going down Bruin Walk and hugged me. I was thinking, "Oh shit Kristina, act cool, act like you don't have cigarettes in your pocket."

And he saw the box of cigarettes in my pocket and pulled them out. And he started screaming, "Since when did you start smoking?" And I was like, "I wanted to try out smoking today." And he was like, "What the hell is wrong with you?" And then I started crying and telling him the whole story about how I was looking all over South Campus for the store to buy the cigarettes and how I didn't want him to take them away because the box cost $4. And how I was so sad and wanted to start smoking. And Paul told me that he would give me $4 if I let him take the box from me. He never gave me $4, but he did take them from me. And I went home and didn't smoke.

A few years after that incident, I called Paul to thank him for stopping me from entering the dark side.

But anyway. The point of all this is that urge came back today.

There probably is half a pack of cigarettes somewhere in this apartment but I'm too jittery and shakey now to get in my car and smoke them.

(Plus I don't really know how to smoke cigarettes.)

-Kristina

Ps.. Here is a really cute picture of me that is totally unrelated to the story I just told you.

It's me before this Japanese tourist audition I did for Pepsi.

In my time of need, you must allow me to have these narcisistic (sp?) moments.