I like repetition. Whether it be a song, a movie, a scene, a book, a memoir, a word, a food, a drink, a friend, if I like it enough to say out loud that I like it, I will like it more with progression. At the campus store, it's always the cappuccino. At Jamba, it's the Protein Berry Workout with whey. At NU Sushi, it's two salmon, two eels, and two freshwater shrimp. Though at Starbucks I am more experimental--today I tried a Chai Tea Latte for the first time. For the last three years it was the Caramel Macchiato, then for the last year at college it was the Pumpkin Spice Latte. Salad dressings will be French. Sex and the City will always resonate with me despite its all-American connotations and chick-flicky notes. Cassis Frappe will be my favorite for a very long time, although I'm underage in this country. Noodles with a fork. Orange juice with lots of pulp. Patterns. They give me a warm feeling. The continuation of something that, at its initiation, had no clue what was to be held in its future. There's something incredibly romantic about that. The idea of fate, instilled into an object.

My vice is repetition. I find solace in it.

When I first came to America, I taught myself to speak English by mimicking Disney movies. I must have watched those movies more than fifty times each. What at first seemed an odd jumble of r's and v's slowly became words, then phrases, then sentences, and then the characters suddenly had personality; clouds cleared. It came to a point where, without even starting from the beginning and just flipping on the "On" switch at random, I could say the lines as the characters were saying them. The meaning of each scene became more evident to me as my vocabulary expanded with each rep. No more stuttering. If I did make a mistake at school, all I had to do was come home and hit replay. Then, everything was okay. In about six months, I could hold a conversation with my peers, then become fluent, then articulate, then outspoken, then what did I become? Addicted. I became addicted to addiction.

Writing, too, was and is a habit. Diary keeping was, and is, a habit. My life. Is built up of blocks of routine habits that I have molded to form a castle around me. My castle of habits--it guards me from the unfamiliarity of the outside world, where random answers seem to adhere to equally arbitrary questions. It represents a constant reminder to everything I love about life, and I love that.

But is that bad, I've started to wonder. And why are they always trying to pull me out.

Sometimes I wonder if my castle is but a sand sculpture on a sinking island.


Guichanaso.