I've been sucked into the anime world lately. 

With my time away, I've kind of realized that I'm not really ready to send my thoughts out to people.

I received a pretty good welcome.  Thanks especially to maniac_rose.  It makes me even sadder to leave, though.  Sorry to have sucked up the time of those of you who actually read my entries.  I'll probably delete this soon.

I absolutely despise English dubbing for anime.  For movies, they do an alright job, but for almost all animes, the voice actors do a much better job in the original form than in english.  I also realized from my list from the other day, I have a real weakness for animes with sword fighting in them and a swordsman that almost never or never loses.

So far, Ruroni Kenshin and Trigun are the only animes that I can stand in English dubbing.  I still prefer english subtitles in those two animes, though.

I absolutely love people.  Especially those with lots of quirks.  I have borderline ADD - they kept wanting to do more and more tests & things, but the result was the same every time, "you're a hair's-width away from getting prescribed medicine, but we need to be sure."  Every time.  I am a perfectionist with a few very minor OCD tendencies (finger touches--my index finger, then my middle, ring and pinky, touching my thumb repeatedly, in that order).  ...Hello, off-subject matter.  Anyways, there is one fly in the ointment.  I can't stand romance.  I love people, but I start to get very weirded out when I see anything more intense than a hug.  I avoid almost all romantic movies, and usually choose action movies, like Live Free or Die Hard and Bourne Supremacy (2nd one.  I like all of them, but that one's my favorite).  I came across an extremely well-written blog of someone whom I would love to become a regular reader, but my romance phobia was activated hugely by the fact that this person was in a relationship and very much in love despite the fact that he was grown up enough to show it in a tasteful manner.

Here's a story as to why I now feel so strongly.  I'm pretty sure that it isn't the reason that I am so sensitive, but I know it probably has quite a bit to do with it

It was getting towards the end of my high school senior year in 2007 and my best friend and I were just hanging out a lot as usual and talking to each other every day when one night I dreamed that I stopped caring & simply let him kiss me.  By the way, I almost never dream about real situations--usually I have super powers and have to go around saving people, but not this time.  I woke up and gave a mental shrug.  "Why not?  What could it hurt?"  We started dating soon after that and I randomly got caught with him and got into trouble often.  It wasn't anything new, and I didn't really care.  The thing was, I felt absolutely nothing for this guy.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  He was a makeout buddy to me.  Nothing more, nothing less.  We talked about how it was just a summer fling and how when I left for college, it would be over.  Apparently, he changed his mind about that.  Towards the end of June, he started talking about being my boyfriend while I came home for breaks, and how when I eventually got married, he could be "Uncle Erik" and other stuff that was super-weird and creepy to me.  It scared me pretty bad and I told him that we should probably take a break from our dates.  I felt nothing when telling him this, and it seemed like he was alright, too.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  --Part or most of the reason that we were friends was because he believed me when I told stories about my mom because his dad was just as abusive as my mom, except physically instead of verbally.--  On AIM and email both, he called me all kinds of names mostly focusing on the fact that he was a studly male (which he wasn't, really--just full of ego) and that I was a trampy female slut with no morals.  Keep in mind that he never got past 1st base with me--kissing was the only thing that ever happened.  It destroyed me and also confused me.  I didn't understand why I was the one who didn't really care about the relationship and he was the one who deleted me from his myspace and every other part of his life that he could and wrote nasty pervasive emails with every intent to hurt me as much as possible.

Because of that, I was in emotional shock and relationship limbo for my entire first semester of college.  I eventually started to come out of it around February.  That first month was monstrous and it was very difficult to keep control of myself because I really am just a mass of hormones kept together only by a thin layer of skin.  Somehow I managed to get through February and March without overly embarassing myself.  My hormones continued to rage unabated, however.

I am a glutton for punishment, though.  I listen to my hormones too often and have decided to date the wrong people as a result.  I also don't know how to do noncommittal relationship things, so I end up dating those people for 2+ months and just weave a very tangled web that does me absolutely no good whatsoever.

Bleh.  I didn't realize until recently that I had 3 rebound relationships over the first guy I dated.  Erik was the 2nd rebound relationship.  Admitting things like this doesn't really make one feel much better about themselves.  Trust me.  I know from recent first-hand experience

It has been a relief, though, to let go of listening to my hormones.  I am determined to turn over a new leaf and stop thinking with my hormones and instead think with my brain and heart.  Planning on not dating or getting married has helped a lot.  What will happen will happen, no matter what I think.  Letting go of that part of my life has been extremely liberating.