Letting go of your hand, I felt fear
In case you would forget me, long after I
Had already begun to move on.
“Why do you think we want to be
Remembered?” You asked once before.
I stopped making believe
Of our fake dialogues since
I can remember.
Getting these words for this post really began in the twilight dawn of a vertical hang over that strictly forbade me sleep for a solid good two hours. I suppose I was so out of it that even having dreamed of a freaky ghost story did not sober me up as it would usually.
It’s a stupid thing to get drunk at the bar and not handle your liquor too well. Before this year I have never understood what it is about alcohol that drew people to them. I saw it as an escapism, I judged people who could not speak their mind without some liquid courage. I believed in owning your words with a clear conscious and whatever may be from them may be. Except I didn’t do that last night. I spent those long dawn hours thinking of what I could have done instead and what to do here on out. To be clear guys, I fucked up.
I realized a few things from waking up to watch the Mindy Project on my phone (yes, I needed a pick me up) – that it wasn’t the concept of losing somebody that scares me, it was the concept of not having fulfilled this sense of fullness in my life that I have most likely imposed on myself. Perhaps it doesn’t make much sense from the get go. Many people remind me that I am young and that it takes time to grow into ourselves. They look at how far I’ve come in my living situation to my work front and my friends that I am doing well for myself. Maybe this is the part of me that wants more than that – it’s just that I’ve been single-handedly spearheading to find my own place and do the very things that people did not believe I could do, it gets a little lonely. No, I am not alone. I spent the morning talking to the very two friends who had to witness me throw up from a cab and pay the driver double the amount for me to get home safely. To be fair to their wasted money, I threw up in the cab too. Classy. I am not alone, but the feeling of loneliness is something different.
This isn’t really the part that I fucked up on though. You see, I’m probably just running around in circles again. Things made so much more sense in my semi-conscious mind while I was up in the vertical. What had I wanted to say was that I let my demon out again, and with her, alcohol just makes her tongue that much sharper. It wrecks all filters that I would otherwise put up and rationality to even put effort into stopping myself from blaming the person I am seeing. People ask me if I am happy, my mother particularly is concerned to be sure I am happy with this person. I feel I am happy, though I feel that I don’t allow myself to be happy.
To paraphrase this as I had to with my friends: when someone gifts you a beautifully aesthetic ceramic art piece, it’s brightly glazed and smoothly hardened. When you glance at the beautiful craftsmanship and the delicacy of care put into it’s design, the artist then tells you of its resiliency too, which is suppose to add to its value. And just because it is so beautiful and because they say it won’t break, what do you do but to drop it and see for yourself. Perhaps the first time it won’t. Doesn’t even hold a scratch. Then the second time it doesn’t either. But then the third puts a crack, or a dent, or an imprint of your crazy anxiety and the fourth may just rip it all apart.
Now I may be melodramatic, because this man has proven to me throughout all the times I have had my freak outs that it has never touched him the same way morality wrecks me. Things supposedly slide from his plate from today onto the next day; a clean slate. In the same way that I am grateful for this easygoing attitude in life, I can’t help but defeat myself in matters which concern my trust towards himself in relation to me. I sit there and wonder where it is that I have gone wrong, where it was that made me so anxiety driven to start conjuring up nonsense in my head again. Aren’t there suppose to be any warning signs to tell you that you have gone off the rails again and that this is all in your head? How do you stop hurting somebody else to hurt yourself?
My girlfriend tells me that maybe I should just be single for awhile. My guy friend asked me something I could not answer but want to know about : So, why do you think you keep breaking it?
I suppose I don’t understand the concept of kindness. Nor do I see myself in the warmth of trust and dependency. It’s not that I don’t want to, but it would appear in these recent cases my body literally and mentally revolts against it altogether. Of course I would love to have a partner to trust and confide in. In all honestly, neither ends scare me that much to think that he would leave me. After having been hit on on multiple occasions by guys in non-drunken states (to declare formally), at the very least for now, my sense of erotic validity is confirmed. Leave that as it may. I suppose it isn’t a big deal in the long run of things, I mean that’s why I’ve always told myself I was in the scene for – the long run – anything else was a waste of my time and money. Yet I can’t seem to keep my shit together if we don’t see each other in a week, or bring myself to feel that I haven’t taken away from any of his happiness in taking his time. And as all of these things whirl wind together in my head, to make it go away all that I have to confess is that I have been very happy with this person, and he has been kind to me, and for whatever the turn out this time, I have been happy. That’s the catch though, it’s only not scary when you don’t believe there is hope at hand and you simply let things fall as they may. What of when you’re in the middle of battling for things and you want to win? Fuck if I know.
He did keep his words from last night though, he texted me goodnight though he hung up on me earlier that evening. All I thought about as I stumbled out of my drunken steaming shower was that I was thankful he kept that part of my trust. Brittle as it may be.
A few things of note:
The important part being, I feel most gratified right now of the feline whining outside my bedroom door. Indeed, 20 will make a better woman out of me.
This is how I get through my days.
It’s cure for times when you can’t seem to get out of the sweet suction of a leather couch and the sweet sweet sighing bodies of dreaming pets on each side. My roommate had been right : I am their’s. And if only, then this whole problem with le boyfriend goes away. What is it Duck? Is it that he cooks? – yeah, god forbid somebody who makes food for a living decides to mate with the unanimously voted ‘most likely to die of ramen overdose’ upon my moving out back in the day. Or that he takes painful heeds to pick all these nice restaurants and then pays for them? Ugh.. Hideous. I loathe myself.
Perhaps to easier resolve all of this, I should say I am like Chandler in Friends. Except that my uneasiness and gutting anxiety is only in vexation against the fact that in every other aspect of life I am Monica. Let’s not kid ourselves, Chandler wouldn’t give a shit about somebody leaving the kitchen towel crumpled and wet. Crumpled and wet! My biggest pet peeve.
It isn’t really that, which we all know when we take a good look. It’s the trusting, the vulnerability, the missing and caring. Bullshit Hollywood ideas that should be shot – no, no, you’re right, I need to calm down. Sigh. It’s scary to want somebody, to want something that you seemingly do not have direct say over (man, am I showing my Monica colors). By god, it is frightening to give yourself away in this Era – like who the fuck mass produced the idea of phone outrages and superstitions? Damn you manipulative genius of the 21st century. It has worked brilliantly.
With everything that has to do with my self probing doubt and auspicious avoidance of vanity – within all human limits – my ever calculative mind spits out the only solution it can find : to assume the worst of everything.
Ultimately you just feel like you’re not trying hard enough, or the worse case thinking he’s not trying hard enough, having realistically done nothing in the first place to have caused such a spike in hostility. Then the berating force of conscience sets in, ingraining into yourself to not do this the next time, don’t cry, don’t you dare fucking cry or who’s going to believe you when you say you’ll stop? It’s like an addiction of sorts. Strangely manipulative to apologize with full earnest but to find yourself in the same mindset the week after, and then week after that. Must be exhausting.
Knowingly, I have most likely exhausted the most common and idle torment that wrecks us all. Most of you out there are probably thinking in comparison you’d be old for any grabs of pairing numbers. I have such a long way to go. The only shitty thing about anxiety and involuntary outbursts of teary caliber is just this : time. The only comfort someone could provide you with, no matter your sister, your colleague or your mom. It takes time, luv. Takes one to know one. You just have to ride the gully of what the ticking clock has to offer you, like an invisible Milky Wave we all stand by. I guess for lack of better terms, birds don’t really see the wind stream they coast on, and it doesn’t seem to do them any harm in this apparent blindness.
There, I’ve just made myself feel a little bit better with that poetic bit of avian flight. Screw all the loving people in my life telling me to just enjoy it and trust. Pfft. I abhor it, this dangerous prescription of time, I can’t get him out of my head more and more everyday. Whether I’m crying or laughing. We’ve got to face it, time has got the best of me.
A blank space in the back of our minds,
I’d imagine
The river roars, like a grainy black and white film
Churning and frothing
It hits and banks at your own peripheral screen; unknown
That is the divide of the river
So quiet you strain to hear it and realize
Conscience has no voice
In the fluid grey matter
Melted between our oily secrets
Denied, but barely, at the horizons of our vision
It will one day eclipse defiance, in its sweet triumph
Leave you only the with the senses of sharp resignation
And to you sweetheart, towards this solemn ghost you smile
Clutch your breath in your heart and hear it pound,
“No, no, no.”
: ” I don’t want to know anymore. No more.”
The day you cross the river.
Recently, I’ve been hit with a large wave of nostalgia.
I’m sure this is some poor milestone event that happens in everyone’s life – who doesn’t want to reverse logic and be children again? – especially children today; lucky bastards, I see them everywhere.
I’ve always thought of myself as a forward thinking person. It never bothered me to leave behind my then current life when I decided to move within 2 months once the idea was voiced. I was not regretful my father was no longer here. I had always been grateful for what it taught me. It was something that was always thrown around in the house I lived in. It was something I took as serious as my stupid Ducklet pride.
When I moved out at 18, I never felt vulnerable nor missed my old life. As serene and placid as it was in the suburban neighborhood with peers my own age. I never once missed high school. Maybe that’s a lie. I miss the ridiculous oblivion the high school environment provides. And in the same breath I abhor the tiny environment it allows for the numerous brilliant minds that have been contorted and warped to believe inside themselves a certain sense of self that will last through their life time based on a teenager’s echelon. In full, I still wouldn’t go back. You can’t unknow things you know. Life is frustrating like that.
Now at almost 19, I feel I haven’t accomplished much in life. Who cares about the job my family is so proud of, who cares about being the youngest between my colleagues. I still feel I have missed out on life’s secret event. I knew it was playing a trick on me. Right?
Sometimes I wish I could waste time. And not just sit at home all day – because I enjoy the solitude – but to sit at home all day and do stupid stuff and not have the harried feeling of knowing I’m wasting time.
I woke up and thought about the time when I used to always sleep over with my cousins and we would play DS (when that was still cool) the moment we woke up. When we unapologetically took that extra hour before physically getting out of bed. The childish routine to brush our teeth one by one and distribute left over breakfast at the kitchen. To watch 3 hyperbole romantic comedies in a row, and cry despite knowing we’ll get puffy eyes the next day at 2am on Christmas Eve.
I missed climbing over each other to reach the computer. I missed just wondering and chattering uselessly about what else life has to bring. I miss discovering how to french braid and having that as a skill. I missed the security, the comfort, their company – the not knowing.
If I were to be offered, I would never opt for omnipotent knowledge or wisdom. Like I said, you just can’t unknow things you already know.
So today I could never allow myself to move back home because I know all those peers back at home still haven’t even properly thought about it. I could never stop the cycle of working the grind because we all know that’s life’s grand entrance in spitting you out into adulthood – I can’t leave, not if the management is unfair. Not if it would be easier. Not even if my mother would not get mad at me for it. Particularly because she wouldn’t, I can never stop.
But I never stop thinking about the times when I was home alone back in that old house, no matter how much I had wanted to leave then, no matter the bad and lonesome things that happened there; I would purposely bring down my blankets and a pillow to curl up on the single sofa, just so I could crunch together and hang a leg over the edge. How I would turn on the single blue lit lamp and watch TV in my home made theater. How at ease I was at with the world in allowing myself to wake up when I wanted to and to continue to feel alright about myself.
How much I wish to stop the torment on how much I hate myself.
But I guess that’s another life’s topic.
Sometimes though, it’s really scary out there… Sometimes I don’t think it’s quite alright that my emotions dwell so lightly I easily cry when I think too deeply. Like now. Sometimes I just don’t want to be here (and of course I’m too cowardly to act on it, because shit, I’m scared), and sometimes I really want to, just so I have a reason to act.
I no longer doubt that my family would grieve but am rather undeserving in pitying my mother for the would-be second loss in her life – how very much unfair that would be to her.
I almost finish the thought that my father should be here instead of me from time to time.
I try to disown that I sometimes sleep with a knife by my bedside. It’s not right. I don’t tell the people I love and trust. I can’t. That would be too sad. Too desperate. Too easily written off as a teenage phenomenon. Really, all that said was because I’m still scared to say it aloud. It’s too weird for someone who does such a good job of appearing brag worthy to her family.
I miss at the end of the day, even the arrogance of a child in their self worth. I’m envious.
Sometimes when you have too much time on your hands, spending your day(s) at home, your head gets into pondering too much deep shit for your own good.
I vaguely remember asking myself, “What if we were all headed into the same direction at life, ultimately.” Like at a convergent point, that’s where we’d all meet.
It wasn’t so much a question relating to death as it was to the brink of our cognitive sanity. People discuss all sorts of things over the blogosphere. Stupid things. Funny stupid things. Stupid things that sometimes need a kick in the ass to be funny. All in all, a lot of people out there struggle with something I have always taken an interest in since middle school. Depression.
Sure, there are tons of definitions out there. You can string together a cohesive line of literary term to box together this state of mind. To me though, it appears depression happens in such a way where you’re slowly slipping, and it all happens in your head. You may appear perfectly normal, but it’s happening. It starts with the supposed ‘normal’ syndromes. You always feel lethargic You’re more isolated. You become mechanical in your day to day life. Wherever you’re slipping to is something I would challenge those wild scientists out there to define for me. Though there have been impressive statements out there allowing us a peek into the mind of madness, I think without having been medically diagnosed, I am playing with something very close, or at least similar.
Right now, it feels like a dark waterfall. Maybe it’s in a cave somewhere, with no lights. And the place smells strong of something earthy, a sort of rock or another. Nothing expensive, but it fills up your senses like too much chlorine does at the public pool. It sounds like a waterfall. The sounds are somewhat comforting to know that it could be a beautiful sight, only you can’t peer further than the edge of the drop. It’s dark at the deep end. I imagine it would be cold, very very cold.
It reminds me of when I used to swim with my cousins at our aunt’s pool. We were so terrified of the 8ft ‘deep end’, where the water became a deep dark blue. You couldn’t see your toes there, and that scared us.
Anyway, this whole waterfall idea I thought of while doing my dishes. Moments of clarity happen in strange ways. They come in the same train that a smart sentence might come to. Somewhere in my head floated the thought, “Well, perhaps we have to intentionally drift off. You have to fall off the side and become the worse version of yourself. Now whether you get any better from there, or whether that’s a sort of salvation… I can’t answer that. Of course, it was a conversation in my head. It’s not that weird until you put it into words aloud.
Now I’m sitting in my bed. Re-reading what I just wrote, I think along the lines of over medication in our world. So many little things that could be easily explained, but somehow so much more soothed with just the name of something that sounds vaguely terrible without the consequences. I sure hope I’m not one of them, thinking to myself at times whether or not I may actually turn out to be bi-polar. Just food for thought when I recall how fragile my emotions can be. How one can burst into tears that you never even knew were dwelling. Or how amazingly one can put up a front for show when the pressure of obligation hits you just the right way, without cracking the code to your mental skull. Maybe I’m just perfectly ‘normal’ in this world.
I wonder how many people out there search up all they can without professional help on this subject and go over a mental check list. The con’s probably never being severe enough for them to go enlist for help. Not enough conviction, I think. For those that went as a pre-emptive strike, I wonder if those same professionals were made so immune to the way the faint of heart visit for for such trivia, that they are conditioned to unknowingly scoff at the sight of someone so apparently normal turning in questions of their sanity.
How would that feel?
Maybe that fear is the most imminent obstacle beyond all other doubts. The deep end can go where it belongs in the face of such terror, such humiliation; Right up your deep end.
After all these years of researching, reading and watching documentaries and productions made under the central idea of our psychological state. Even tampering with it in my own mind. Maybe it’s the author’s imagination. A creative soul can be called either blessed or just wickedly cursed. God, if I was ever that creative.
I remain neither. In cryo. Suspended. It’s like a bad dream; I’m told there are only two ways for you to wake up in real life – I forgot the first, but the second is to feel the sensation of falling. I am floating above the deep end in an impossible situation. I cannot tell whether that body, the very one that looks like me, is under my control. From this mental perspective, I can pan in onto the face, where my eyelids may or may not be rocking back and forth, I cannot decide, because if they were, that means I’m dreaming. Am I? I do not know whether or not I will turn over, and if it does, I somehow know for sure that the current impossible suspension will be dropped. I will fall.
Then what?
The title should be more appropriately renamed to ‘Being Lonely.’
We all hear of these romantic endeavors from famous athletes, to singers, to poets, to dancers who pour their life into their calling. It has always sounded like such a storyline, like being a hero in your own life. So much gripe and passion, so much conviction that all of this currently endless seam is ultimately going to lead you somewhere.
I find when you are focused on something, a goal, to polish yourself, to build something, to change something, life becomes really lonely. All of your usual old hobbies are no longer within acceptance under the self-imposed stanza of excellence. All your familiar pals and buddies no longer challenge you in such a way to move forward. There are none of those tantalizing intelligent conversations that aid each other in uncovering one epiphany to another in life. They’re still great people though. But then there is just you. Then there is only the comfort of this one discipline – to do the work and keep moving forward.
All of a sudden though, the rest of life’s perspective seems to be absorbed into focus too quickly. Much too abruptly for you to realize what has just happened. It’s too much and you begin to question what you’re doing all this for. Everyone else questions you as well.
You found out that you had ultimately changed, for better or worse. Different than the last time your friends and family have last seen you, though it really did not seem like that long ago. But wait, let me count this, last Christmas…really?
Take a look around yourself and you find that you no longer talk to the entirety of your phone list. You find that because you removed yourself away from social media outside of the blogosphere you feel like a fish on land. Where else do you quietly and discreetly find out about someone else’ life. What, to actually meet up and talk to them? Well, we’ve never quite done that before, and quite honestly you don’t really care enough to. It’s just the intimacy of a presence. Anything.
At the end of the day, you find you can’t even fully indulge in this fleeting sense of neediness because you know spending time with these people – great as they are – are still ultimately a conscience in the back of your mind to move on.
Focus, you say. Well, it’s pretty darn lonely.
It never is as romantic as we thought it would be. Not getting in shape. Not getting out of bad habits/addictions, not moving out on our own (though that has been in more ways than not, plenty great), not in developing yourself and trying to be a better person everyday. You are personally moving forward and it feels great. You’re pulling all the right stops and telling your friends what a ride this has been – but hey, hey guys, come on, let’s gooo…
They’re not coming. They say people sometimes come into our lives for a season, and they leave or are left behind for a specific reason too. We all know that nobody is your best friend when you’re focused. We know as well that they will love you, if they really had meant to care for at the end of the day when you come through. And you’d probably readily love them back, not for the generosity factor, but because you know that’s the better way. You can’t help it though, you’re lonely right now and you wish they would tag along. I can’t help it either.
Many a times I would wish for the console of a selfish relationship. The parent/child strategy, the soft caressing escape route. The one where you’ll take care of me and I’ll be as carefree as I please. I’ll be weak and you’ll be strong. I’ll be your opposite and your biggest fan. I’ll depend on you. And I know everyday I am being tested, I am weary and human and tempted. It all sounds pretty self-defeating, so because you knew that already you mentally wear yourself down weather thin.
Focus.
Trying. Trying to be stronger everyday, to understand yourself. Trying to grow up, just the little bit. Inches to make up miles. They say we are all lights in this world, but if you are laser focus you can cut glass, because you are great. You have so much unmapped potential it would blow your mind. You have the capacity to love more than you think you can handle. You are capable of vulnerability but also to hold steadfast. You just might not know that yet. Or believe it.
Either or, we focus, quietly, watch, patiently, it’s happening all around us. You are charting unexplored territory. Don’t forget to have fun with it. I’m needful to remind myself sometimes too.
It’s just bound to be a little lonely sometimes.
In a lot of ways, people surprise me. This could be good or bad, up to their compassion to their downright cruel honesty, to themselves or others. So maybe the Duck in my head thought it was getting old I wasn’t getting – being – a surprise myself.
*If you’re hoping for some life-actually-mattering-epiphany, get out of here. I got nothing in store but some crabby story of a girl growing into her wits.
The past Friday night and Saturday day, I spent mopping around, reading sappy old romance books and nursing bad cramps. I could have given less for the world, didn’t even spring up to finally get out of bed until the agent and visitors I had completely forgotten about came to the house and I ran into the shower. Capping off two nights of waking up in the middle of the night on the couch to shower at 2 am and sleep at 5:30 am. That is also a huge factor as to why I have not been snooping on your posts lately. Self-indulgent-pity does that to people sometimes.
Not a great surprise there. Except that I almost broke out into whining tears when my mother wanted me to say a greeting for her boyfriend again for the 3rd time over the phone. It was a low point, truly.
Thank god for Midol.
So when I had woken up on Sunday morning, my room glazed over with the blue tinted light of a cloudy day, opening up from a stormy night, I didn’t even know what to think of the fact that I was expected at my friend’s house in a few hours to get ready for our grad boat cruise. All I could wonder at was that, whilst trying to fall asleep at 6 am only a few hours earlier, I had the terrible sensation of an arrogant car repeatedly and stupidly zooming past too close, making me wince and wake up from semi-sleep every so often. All the while I was only in bed, struggling to keep my cat in an embrace. My friend and I later concurred that I was in fact a superhero growing into her formidable powers. Peter Parker had some messed up sensory system too right?
Skip past the entire part where my friends and I were priming ourselves up. No need to brag too loudly of my infamousy with falsies. It was too much of a slap in the face that the one friend who never puts on make up managed everything the quickest.
When we aboard our bus to the boat, I even forgot my ticket, making myself more wildly palpitated – I had the greatest fear of my bowels giving out on me – That feeling while waiting in line for a huge roller coaster, and though you’ll love it afterwards, it doesn’t stop your stomach from grumbling much too suspiciously. I hoped it wasn’t too big of a problem, I hadn’t eaten much but a succession of Ferraro Roche’s for breakfast, speedy as I was getting out of bed that morning. Huffah.
After aboarding the cruise, and the initial frenzy to take pictures with everyone there, I sat down with my friends to our respective plates of buffet food. I couldn’t even eat. My friend ‘deared-poored-me’ and said I had social anxiety. Did I? I found that difficult to believe, even being me and feeling how I felt, as I tried to explain to my friend, who was probably out of politeness, listening to me before she called dibs on devouring my food. If not for the flitting eyes, I looked the most at ease. My bowels said so otherwise.
When crowds finally began to form on the dance floor, I looked at them and felt the dread of every other social event I had tried to fit myself into, since grade 7, trying to be cool at a youth dance and feeling all the world of a grown up grinding some stranger. My god the mass of them. But I had my friends, and we formed our own little circle, we butchered our way into the crowd, and there I was, I was dancing, and I was having a great time even if I didn’t know half the songs they played, and would probably never raise an eye to a good half of the people there when we go back to school.
We danced for a good few hours. I am surprised. Even more so when some classmates told me I was good at it. Flattered as I was, I felt rather dreadful raising my head to acknowledge their compliments since my friends being my friends and all, they did not neglect to tell me I looked like absolute shit crying tears of sweat across my face with hair plastered all around me. Thanks for that. Plus, that crowd cheering on the two Bases kids in the center to dance their heart out – well, maybe they weren’t such intimidating people.
But really, thanks for the night. Though hell if I’m not rolling back to school as a bookworm/cat lady on Tuesday. Some things don’t change.
writer & artist
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