I am at my most poetic when I am my saddest. Everything is a metaphor because everything hurts too much to explain vividly. I start speaking in weird imagery. I start thinking in raw, formless, haikus and inversed sentences like ‘cheerfulness ran down in tears, draining out of me’.  Do you ever have those moments? Where everything comes to you, but you don’t know if you should write it down because its too saddening to read.

Because I feel like I am being dragged into the sea. I’m standing, and then I am not. I think to myself, I can take another wave, and it comes, and then another, and then I am beneath it and I don’t know if I want to get up. I’m not sure it’s worth the effort to struggle against the tide, when it’s so easy to float and let it pull me down. 

I feel like I can barely breathe. Like there is this big cloud of gloom pushing down on me, a heavy weight stealing my breath.

I don’t understand why I cried. I don’t understand why there’s this heart ranching sadness hovering around my room.

I need to get out. I would go for a walk if the gates weren’t lock by now.

It’s so suffocating.

I need to get away from myself.

It’s just one of those days I guess, where you feel so alone you don’t understand how you are going to make it through tomorrow. I wonder how I am going to make it through the night.

Tomorrow there will be the sun. But for now I feel like a hollow box, wooden and plain with a rusty lock from being left out in the rain for too long. 

I’ve been having rather gloomy thoughts lately. The latest book I’m reading, Thirteen Reasons Why, has been in my head for days. It’s a haunting book. I can barely bring myself to read it because it speaks such truth and depth about how little we truly know our actions may affect another. And that idea, the idea that I have unintentionally hurt others and remained oblivious to it---that is haunting my hours. I keep thinking that I’m going to get my own box of tapes. Because I sometimes say hurtful things without really thinking it through. I know the words I say can come across as sharp. There are times when I even mean them to be. Not every time, not all the time, but occasionally.

I don’t start of the day with the intention of being mean. But I know I am. I know a little part of me is mean, envious, and hurtful.

But this blog has already been filled with gloomy posts of dark thoughts, and when I read them back I don’t want that heavy blanket to suffocate me. So I won’t write any more on the book I’m reading or how it’s affecting me. At least not for today.

I volunteered to help out as a waitress/butler at an event for the elderly. It was a themed dinner, revolving around hats and more hats.

I made new friends! And then there’s the joy of knowing you did something good. Helper’s high and all that. It’s an uplifting feeling to know you did something of worth. That you didn’t waste your day. 

I’m starting to feel detached again. There warning signs are like bells in my head. I’m not talking to the new friends I made, not out of avoidance, but the simple ‘I have nothing to talk about.’  I don’t know what to say. I feel myself drifting.

Have you ever felt alone in the world? The feeling that you are just walking though the blur of passing moments; adrift because you are so utterly alone. It’s not depression, cause I have never hit rock bottom. But just the feeling that there’s no one there and that you are just shouting at walls. Like little Echo sitting in the tree, waiting for people to pass by but never being able to tell Narcissius how she feels about him. Like this is some endless dream.

I know life exists beyond the insignificance of me. Others think, therefore they are, a sort of spin off Descartes’ theory.  There are ideas that exist beyond my simple comprehension, beyond what I could ever grasp. So I know I am not in a dream. Because if there are things I can not comprehend, how can I be alone? My mind is not that complex to be able to trick myself to that extent. I and the world exist because there are those who feel what I don’t feel. I only wish I didn’t feel cut off from it.

I’m waiting for Friday. Doing good deeds give me a temporary joy. Right now that is all I need.

So I’m writing this reader, explaining these rambled thoughts because I need to explain to someone how I feel. Things I will probably never find it in myself to speak aloud. I want you to know if you feel numb, then you aren’t alone. Cause the world and its people exists as long you know somewhere out there someone feels the way you do at whatever moment in time. Its and odd sort of comforting thought, but there you go. I exist, because you do. 

stream of a late night consciousness

My favourite hiding spots are books. And you could argue with me about how the printed page would win over an ereader any day, but to be honest I don’t care all that much. I only need to read. I need to. That’s about it. There’s all these words running through my head, running, running, running and I need a way to slow them down.

I need a way to pretend I feel.

I can’t sleep, and there are books beside me. I would read, but the lights are off. And so I am doing the next best thing really, typing these words as they come so that they stop dancing and skipping through my head.  I still buy books, still walk into second hand bookstores and spend hours searching for interesting titles because I love being surrounded by books. My reader is just my personal, portable library. Because call it habitualization or whatever, but I don’t feel. Too many books have passed through my hands for me to whine about how it feels better. Of course it does. But I can’t carry three books with me whenever I go on a holiday. I can’t stand the nights lying in bed, knowing a scene, seeing it play out so well in my head but be unable to place it, to put it to rest because I am not at home. Or because someone borrowed it and never returned it. To have half finished scenes in my head that don’t leave until I pick up the book, flip to that scene and just absorb it all over again.

I have no qualms about reading of a machine. I read because it’s very much an extension of me. I would read of a character whose patience astounded me, who was reserved and quiet, but kind and I would think I want to be like her. I pick up personalities from my favourite characters. You could argue, that I pick my favourite characters by how much I related to them, by how similar they are to me, but no not really. That’s about partially true. They reflect me as much as I reflect them.

I wonder who I am sometimes if I pick emotions and ideas off of books. I wonder if I have ever been me. But then again, if we are but blank canvas, left hanging on some faded wall picking the dirt and dust and dead skin of the people who pass us, are we ever ourselves? We are but a product of the world. An influence upon influence building upon learnt conditionings. There you go psychology classes, I’ve learnt something today.

I’m writing these midnight rambles down so that I can let them breathe for a moment. And god, I sound like the lady in The Yellow Wallpaper.

I can pin point the moment I started feeling numb. Numb, numb, numb, what a word. The roll of the fat and ineloquent tongue. Lips slapping together. It feels exactly how it sounds. It feels like I have just be administered some annestatic at the dentist. But yes, back to the point. I know moment, the memory, and I acknowledge that the incident that triggered it was tragic. Boo. But I understand more now than I did then. I understand now why sometimes, we can be so weak and allow such condemning actions. I understand how sometimes we can forget to think of beyond ourselves, beyond how we feel at a specific moment. I get that. To an extent I understand and forgive. I think I have for years now. But the numbness remains. How strange. Or perhaps, it has always been there and I have been fooling myself that I actually feel any sort of anything.

I get sad. Of course I do. But it’s such a flimsy sadness. I do something good and it makes me feel good about myself, but there’s a hollowness to it. It’s like I’m skimming the surface of human emotions. I don’t understand how to move into deeper waters. I would welcome extreme sadness, if only as proof I feel. But even as I write this, these rambling thoughts that I think off when it’s dark and I’m alone, I barely feel a thing.

Reading lets me pretend I feel. Because for those brief moments, I am not myself. I‘m running from danger. I am watching the sun rise from high above my favourite tree. I ride on dragons and face foes and outsmart villains. I am the villain. I am beyond this temporal body. I think that is why I even plot stories, plan them to the intricacies, but never really introduce the pen to the paper and sit down to write. Because I love planning and building worlds and characters. I like trying to figure them out. But I have no motivation to give them flesh through words because they already exist for me, to an extent.

I am pathetic. But I don’t lie to myself about loneliness. I don’t fool myself into believing that I am not alone. We are all individual beings trying to carve our way in this world, digging our trenches and building our walls, and as much as we think we share with the solider across our wall, we don’t. There may be similarities, things you both love but he is not you and would never really know who he really is. You know who he is then, in that situation, but the world you see is not his world. Nor does he see yours. So since we wander in our own versions of our world, brushing only occasionally with others when they overlap like a Venn diagram, aren’t we alone?

I don’t know why I read romance novels. I think I like making myself believe that romance and love and all that abiding, deep, feeling exists. That they are not just words.

--written on the 21st of September, while I should have been sleeping.

moving on

It helps to wake up with thoughts about lavender.

For these past months, I have been in a state of limbo. It might have been years. I don’t think I have ever been too detached from numbness to differentiate when I am not in such a state. But I have been drowning, being pulled by inches deeper into the currents of nothingness with each dreary month. I have felt for the longest time that I was a page of written words whose ink was fading with time. I was losing my sense of self. In small degrees, I still am I think. I’m not too sure who I am exactly.

There was once a time where I was independent to my very core. I didn’t require company. I could do very well on my own. I could socialize when necessary, and take the step forward to be friendly. I think I have been fading for a while now. The opportunity that homeschooling gave, the opportunity to run from the oppressiveness of high school, has left I think its own dire effects. It gave me freedom; I did not have to face the darker, meaner side of myself. I removed myself from the environment that perpetuated that. I planted myself in a secluded sanctuary that was fill with children too young to really play the games I used to. There were no power games, no manipulation, and no backstabbing lies to the degree I was familiar with. It was a relief. But I think I held me back as well. I was worried for a long time about being left alone. Where was the independent girl then? I was never one to force my opinion on others, but surely, surely I used to stand up for what I believed in and for my friends? When did I grow meek?

So perhaps the fact that I am now divided from the friends I cling to in college is a blessing in disguise. They are great friends, friends that I have felt closer to than ones I have known my whole childhood. Don’t misunderstand me. But having to make new friends all over again left me dreading university. So the separation in many ways was necessary. We will meet up for lunches and talk, but we will never share the same classes again. We won’t spend hours in each others’ company. There is something sad in that. But I am realising I can’t grow if I cling to the same people for the rest of my life. I spent the first few days with people whom I thought only tolerated my friendship out of courtesy, only to now seeing the potential in these budding friendships. I made new friends, separate from the previous group. I’m hoping I can keep this up. Because I haven’t been this bubbly, this friendly, in a long, long while. There’s a lack of reservation in this new self of mine. And I can’t express how glad I am that I am not holding myself back, that my fears aren’t holding me captive. I don’t get as embarrassed as easily. I’m opening up. When have I not felt embarrassed by my every mistake?

I am holding my own.

I still feel numb. But at least there’s now a sense of relief that accompanies it. 

the origin of who we are.

“I believe in nothing, not the end, and not the start.”

--100 Suns, 30 Seconds to Mars

Such haunting words. It startled me at the beginning how true those words ring in my head. I was still the moment I first heard those opening lines, holding the earphones closer, so each and every word could resonate through me. The next day isn’t a new beginning, New Year’s has never been a day to mark the beginnings of a new life to me; life is a continuum.

I’m sitting outside in the garden, hearing the TV going on inside. My pet rabbit is keeping me company. And all that I’m thinking is that life is a continuum. I’ll be starting my degree in a few days, and that has had me petrified for a while. I can’t imagine beginning all over again. I’ve been dreading making friends all over again, watching the cliques gather, and knowing that the first few months are but a trial in friendship. We put on our best faces because we don’t want to be alone. Being alone is being vulnerable. And oh how we humans hate baring our souls. What if I have can’t make friends I trust? What will I do with my empty hours between classes? And the part of my brain that stresses a need for independence screams at my own insecurities. The loner in me scoffs my head, because truth be told, solitude is my refuge. I find I can enjoy solitude when I make the conscious decision to be alone. But that doesn’t mean I don’t fear being left alone, not when it’s forced upon me.

So I have been fearing these days that lead up to it. I have been fearing the beginning. But it isn’t. Is it? It will just be another three years of my life. And no matter how bad some of those are going to be, they will only be part of a stretch of days that make up my life, days that will be filled with both sadness and joy and always, numbness. Because it is a continuum. I have changed daily, slowly, unnoticeably; as momentous as starting a new chapter of my life will be, I choose if I want to be defined by it. Just because I start my degree doesn’t automatically me that I’ll be a different person. I have always been changing. When are we ever constant?

It is just another string of days. And I choose how I spend it. Change shouldn’t be limited to the big events in our lives. If I change anything about myself, it has to start today, doesn’t it? Because it shouldn’t be held down to an event. I’ve always made some friends in new situations. And if I have done this countless times before, I should be able to do it again. And again. Because I’m going to not let myself fear rejection. I’m not going to fear the beginning of things, not when it’s dawning on me that ‘beginning’ is but a word. A word that carries more dread than it actually deserves. Why do I fear beginnings? I’m not entirely sure. It’s the fear of failing, and failing so badly I don’t want to start. Even when I crave to. So I’m not going to think of this as beginning.

I found lavenders growing outside the gate in a vase yesterday. I never noticed them before. When once keeping them in careful tender care in the shade, where we would always see them, led each stalk to whither, their tiny purple buds crumbling at a touch, the plant is somehow thriving outside. Somehow they survived; they never really left.So I'll take their example. It’s not starting over. I’m merely continuing where I left off.