Tues, June 29 - the fun mall day

I had a lot of fun on Monday hanging out with my friends. I hadn't seen them in 9 months at least. 

Today has been kind of a bad day. I still haven't processed everything that happened yesterday so I'm hoping to do that here so I can have some happy memories. 

Yesterday morning I woke up late after staying up until 5 for Architectural engineering homework I was behind on, and so I wouldn't have to worry about it while I was with Emily. I thought I had about 15 minutes to prepare so I only washed my hair instead of taking a shower and scrambled to pack. I found out they'd only just left the hospital just as I finished so I spent another 15 minutes waiting stupidly at the curb trying to spot their car. My phone died while she called me asking me where I was. She'd put in my address wrong. They arrived shortly.

Her house was messier than I'd last saw it. Before we went back home, they stopped by Porto's right next to my work to get a ton of pastries and breakfast burritos. The burritos were really good. I formally met Emily's brother like actually talked to him, and he was surprisingly pleasant. A dork. 

We went back to her room and she showed me where everything was. It felt cramped and uncomfortable to me; I think I have a bad association with bedrooms because of my own room being the place of a lot of bad feelings. I started feeling sick, partially because of that and because of the anticipatory and social anxiety I'd had bottled up until that moment. I felt really confused about how to handle that feeling around a friend, especially around Emily. The feeling of being sick and vulnerable and weak was awful but I couldn't ignore it either. I could tell she felt awkward about it too because she noticed it but seemed to consciously ignore it and keep doing her own thing, which was trying on clothes for going to the shoppes later. I kind of feel hurt that she did that, but it's not abnormal behavior for her, and I know she didn't mean to be rude.

She suggested she'd get me some tea and I accepted, which resulted in some hilarious shenanigans where she brewed ginger-ginseng tea that was way too strong. Basically ultra spicy water. I got very stubborn about finishing it and she kept laughing at the expression I made at every gulp. That whole thing distracted me from my anxiety and the feeling in my stomach, which allowed it to go away. At the end I bet that I would chug the rest of it and that ended up in my whole esophagus burning and my eyes watering, then I burped massively about a minute later which made us both die laughing.

I'll continue this tomorrow. The mall was fun, eating out was fun, spending money and hanging out with friends like everyone my age is supposed to di was fun. I felt whole.

Out friend texted that she was already at the mall so we drove there. It was about 12 We found her in Barnes and Noble. I immediately hid when I saw her. She was a lot skinnier than I last remembered and had sunburns on her arms and legs. We wandered around the Barnes and Noble looking at manga, then wandered to the humor section and read a couple books, then went to the kids section and reminisced about our childhood. Then we went to the clearance section and actually considered buying some things. I bought an Art Nouveau book and an illustrated Art of War, Emily bought a small novel that I forget the name of, and Stacy looked for a book called Carmilla but couldn't find it. 

We wanted to eat after that. We wandered around a bit and then drove across the street to the korean barbecue. We weren't sure if it was open at first but it was, and we walked in and were told there was a 20-30 minute wait time. Stacy gave her phone number so they could text her when our seat was ready. It was then that we started joking about becoming polyamorous wives so we wouldn't need to find guys. Stacy would be the "husband", I would be the "wife", and Emily would be the "pseudohusband/wife". 

We left and decided to get an early desert as we waited. We went to the shaved ice place in the same plaza and bought a regular sized mango shaved ice to share. It was really good and it felt good to share, I can't finish one of those things on my own and I feel like I got the perfect amount. We took some stereotypical social media postable going-out pictures beforehand and they turned out very cute; my friend posted it to her instagram story and just wrote "with the wives" on it and tagged us. I did the same later on. The atmosphere was good, I could tell we were all happy to see each other after so long and there was a sense of sweet camraderie. 

We went back to the car to wait for a bit and soon got the text that our seat was ready. We went in and got a corner seat in the far end of the restaurant. I sat with Stacy on one side on the inside of the booth and Emily sat on the other. We all decided what to order, with Stacy being the one who talked to the waiter. She ended up having trouble temembering the order so I helped. I forgot how she always takes over stuff like that when we go out. We ordered three spicy tofu soups and brisket, bulgogi, pig belly, and squid at first. Meanwhile we started eating the side dishes. Stacy and Emily really liked eating the rice paper, though I don't really see the appeal of it. We also all liked the sweet korean-style mashed potatoes. I liked the turnips too. We shared the salad they gave too. 

The food was good. I remember getting startled by the calamari steak popping and making fartlike noises when put in the grill. The servings were kind of small and the cuts were weird and chunky, but nevertheless it's been a long time since I properly ate kbbq outside, and even more time since I ate with friends. It was a good time. Stacy and Emily were serving and cutting so I kind of just sat there for a bit, until the smoke kept blowing into my face and making my eyes water so I moved to the other side. We joked about the wind god being angry at me. They grabbed and moved my things without even asking and it was so easy and nice - when I have to do this with my family it's with groans and a complete lack of acknowledgment even from my dad. It just felt really different and much more positive and considerate. After that I helped cut the meats since I'd shoved Emily to the side. We ordered some intestines at the end which Stacy was reluctant to try. Emily ordered small intestine by accident (she took the question "small or large?" as the literal size of the intestine instead of the type of intestine) so it came out more rubbery than what we were expecting. I helped cut it into little pieces so Stacy could try. It was like chewing on meat flavored rubber.. in a good way? 

I was starting to feel sort of spacy at this point and I mentally acknowledged it. I was also feeling a little left out of Stacy and Emily's conversation, but I reasoned that in the past my brain has tended to falsely believe I'm being excluded when I'm not. Also they hadn't talked to each other in a much longer time than I'd talked to either of them, so I resolved to not let it bother me too much. 

When it came time to get the tab we coudln't figure out how to do exactly split the money so Stacy offered to pay for all of us and take whatever spare cash we had in exchange. I only had $10 which she was perfectly fine with but bothered me. We left smellig strongly of meat. The girls wanted desert again, so I had us stop by the ice cream place. We chose three scoops to share; cookie butter, dark matter brownie batter, and vanilla. They were all good besides the vanilla in my opinion; that one was their choice because they're the type to go to a fancy ice cream place and get vanilla. The brownie batter was a dark grey color and had streaks of brownie thickly throughout it. The cookie butter had crunchy bits in it and tasted really strongly of cookie filling (this was my first time tasting cookie butter). I paid for it to make up for Stacy paying for the kbbq. We shared on a bench outside in the middle of the main road. I remember us talking about how Trader Joes sells cookie butter during the holidays and how I should buy it. We kept joking about the polyamorous relationship thing throughout the day, referring to each other as "wife" and "husband" to the point that I realized that all of us were actually a tiny bit serious. I don't think any of us want to deal with guys HAHA. I said that I'm down to marry a friend just so I don't have to deal with men and they agreed with me. At one point I jokingly said that if we're not married at 30 I'd consider it, and Stacy said she was thinking more 25. 

At this point we just started wandering around the mall. We didn't walk in one clear path, we kind of crisscrossed across the mall constantly and went to every place like three times as a result. We went to Victoria's Secret/Pink (I was dubbed the "personal salesperson", they were both so shy! Not used to going to such a place) , Bath and Body Works (the smell was very strong, we walked around and sniffed things), Francescas (spent some time rifling through the clearance section there and had some hilarious shenanigans with a broken curtain on the fitting room so they had to hold it up for me - the shirt ended up being an xs because I'd grabbed the wrong size), Windsor (we looked for a dress for Stacy but all the nice ones were in the wrong size, and the rest were tacky or made out of bad material. It was fun to speculate though, and we all ended up crowded into a single dressing room at one point trying stuff on. I spent some time staring at a box of boob tape.), Sephora (this was especially fun as I'm starting to get more into makeup, and Emily finally got to use her $10 Sephora gift card that she's been mentioning for months. She randomly got it from a club as an award. We both bought the same fake eyelashes for $10, and I also bought lash glue for $9. This was my first try with them. Emily also bought some sunscreen. I tried to find some red eyeliner but to no avail again, and we just had fun walking around and looking at all the stuff plus making fun of capitalism), H and M (not much to say here, everything seemed too big for some reason), Banana Republic (we looked for a dress for Stacy here too to wear to a wedding but everything seemed to be the wrong color or style, plus super expensive). We also wandered around a baby shop for a bit and I periodically goofed off by touching the fountain. In the end we ended up back at Barnes and Nobles because Stacy wanted a frapuccino. I paid for it because I still felt bad about the kbbq, and was extremely tempted to go for my third dessert (cheesecake)  but held myself back. Emily ordered a water. We walked around the manga section again as they finished their drinks and those two talked a lot between them about mangas Emily likes. I haven't been as into manga lately so I didn't have much to contribute, but I listened and looked at manga I recognized and didn't. 

It was then about time to go home. It was around 7:30 at this point. I'll add more to this tomorrow. Love < 3