む

At a time when more content is flowing online in one day than could be consumed continually over one lifetime, I catch myself thinking it’s be best to lighten my own load, and my own footprint. Today I just read a comment spelling out the legend of Alexander the Great who, after his death, had his coffin paraded through the streets with his hands sticking out, as if to say “I take nothing from this world”. Such a lesson of humility in the face of death! We take nothing indeed, not even the knowledge of recognition or vilification—when we die, surely nothing that we cherished will matter even to us, for whatever the “I” we are will have been extinguished. I suppose people who believe in an afterlife disagree. But why do I, who believe that things end with the death of the brain, am attached to recording so many things? What do I have to bring to the table that is worth writing down? Surely these existential ramblings have no value to anyone. My sketches either. They say something about me, but there is still so much more that was never said or expressed, so much in the silence that nobody will ever know or remember.

If it does not matter to somebody else, then it must matter to me, my living and breathing self. But have I made any progress that warrants so much wind being huffed and puffed, here and there? Do I go back and find interesting insights from my past self? Not really. More often than not, I find I do not relate very much to that person, though I may not entirely disagree—it’s just that I don’t often remember spelling out some things, or even caring about the same things anymore. The things that used to be important have become history, relics that my current self has next to no use for. The things that once consumed my time and attention, which I like to think have shaped me in some way or form, I cannot find an interest for anymore.

The traces of them inhabit my space, in the form of notebooks, books, doodles, trinkets I though I’d have a use for, and indeed in my external hard drive, which contains currently almost 2TB of data which I decided to keep for future reference. But of all that do I consult much of it anymore? Will that interest my future self? More importantly, do I want my future self to dwell on these relics, instead of focusing on the present? instead of living?

To be sure, an archive isn’t a bad thing in and of itself—and one cannot know what the future is made of, what value a seemingly worthless thing might gain in the eyes of another (including ourselves, for we become someone entirely else over the years)... but if Youtube has taught me anything, it’s that our attention is more drawn to things that are well curated and edited, a form of true, rigorous archiving that requires time, skill and dedication to achieve. It’s indeed the work of a true professional that their experience can be laid out in understandable terms, and it requires focus and expertise to create the sort of valuable content that will actually be perused and used in the future. Otherwise one is piling the work of sifting through the mess to this future person who might never come, who might never care enough—and will just bin everything, burn those scribbles, format that drive. Whether it’s oneself or somebody else is irrelevant, the matter of the fact is that relevance has a small window of opportunity in any given life.

We devote our time to precious few things across our lives, and those things.... are not much recorded about. Or they are, but in a manner so wildly inconsistent that nobody knows what they’re doing anyway. Child rearing, intimate relationships, health, the dance of toil and leisure, glimpsing the worth of it all... In the end the record isn’t worth reading as much as it should be just lived, muddled through, contended with.

Humans leave traces, like little carved stones paving a haphazard way forward. I am always amazed that sometimes a question that plagues me is best answered by an obscure forum post from 12 or 15 years ago. The person who wrote probably never thought someone in the far future, and probably from a distant location, would find solace in their little message in a virtual bottle, which might not have been seen by more than a few dozen people over the course of a decade. I once wrote a sort of poem for my Skyblog when I was 17 or 18, which I’ve lost and mostly forgotten, but conveyed that just existing was already influencing the world. Maybe my impact on the world won’t be felt through anything I’ve written down, but in some anonymous interaction that, unbeknownst to me, seared itself down someone else’s psyche. Like this one poem still shimmies its shadow, somewhere in my mind.

Maybe I don’t have to delete everything. Maybe the mess is fine as it is.

But I am bothered by it. I feel the weight of what I carry with me, the little world of conscientious records that I keep farming and forgetting. When I do look at it, the yield looks enormous, yet it brings me very little nutrition—in other words I have twenty mountains of stuff, and no idea how to squeeze its potential out for actual use.

Its very existence feels burdensome, even if I don’t look at it. It’s like so many lose threads that threaten to snag onto something at any time. It’s also that the more I carry along, the more I have to lose. I want to get rid of it before I undergo the pain of actually losing it. But what if? what if? that’s the thing, the fear of lacking, the fear of wanting, in the future, in some potential time when I’m bored out of my mind, without the internet, and crave the distraction, the “inspiration”—when I crave remembering, by flicking through thousands of badly framed photos, just to remember those times, back then... rather than live now.

Have we gained anything from capturing so much? Leaps and bounds clearly have not distributed themselves evenly across the fields of human expertise. The very foundations and humdrum of life though... are still ever so tedious, only just a little differently from our forebears. We haven’t transcended anything. In fact, the more we record, and the more it seems that action, true focused and valuable action, as well as unadulterated enjoyment, escape our grasp. Wisdom still evades us at seemingly the same rate as in “less evolved” times—times that still managed to birth great schools of philosophy despite the lack of sophistication in their means of transmission, despite more spartan lifestyles. Or should I say because of this sobriety? Because of boredom, because of not being able to go back again and again, to consume ad nauseam the same relics, or to chase some new collectible ones.

Maybe I’d really be better off deleting everything. Maybe I should focus on curated content like art books, which can be found of value to somebody else after I pass away. As for my own creations and brain vomit, nobody can miss what they’ve never known—they will find their own answers in their own time, if it’s relevant to their life, if it fits their window of opportunity. No matter how giant of a fart I’ve produced, it’s still as light as air.

On my own I’m squirming. So many conflicting desires and drives, diverging more than they converge, pulling my attention and energy apart. The most vexing one is having to live day to day as a biological human: having to eat, to shit, to sleep, to clean—and to interact. I get lonely. I flee people yet I need them. And all of this detracts from the things I can do, things that nobody can partake in, so that my need for belonging and my need for purpose are 2 birds so far apart from one another that one stone wouldn’t find both.

I draw, I write, I sing, I read and ponder and sew and spin (fantasies), and I’m much happier being alone when I do that. Having people around makes me nervous, awkward; having to acknowledge them and giving them attention feels bothersome. But myself fights me: it gets lonely. It wants belonging, and not of any random kind—it wouldn’t be content with a simple peer group. My self wants a family and tribe. And my self is woefully unprepared, ill-equipped, and disinclined towards the efforts and patience required to make such a close-knit unit happen.

Besides, I am fully aware of the futility of those desires. Family is a sham, a false god which still brings people to some altar, so that they would throw themselves into a concept (and little more than that) which, more often than not, does not stand the test of time. How many close friendships end with betrayal and estrangement? How many marriages end in divorce and/or abuse and/or neglect? How many children leave their elderly parents unattended, alone, in a time when, and place where, community is not a given? We may run forward from loneliness, but we’re almost all guaranteed to fall into it at the end. The slope grows ever steeper with the years: should you waste your years, the chances for sturdy friendships, fulfilling partnerships and an enduring legacy grow ever fainter, ever more irremediably.

How ridiculous is it that my yearning impedes my well-being? I want to hold the illusion in my hand, nay! I want to hold it close, against my heart, so I can truly feel either its reality or its hollowness. Knowing one thing is different from experiencing it. And sometimes you can only eat your cake when you’ve actually had it. (sounds obvious, but please think on it) I have been loved and it wasn’t enough, yet still yearn for more, hoping it will stuff the gaping wounds with Good Feels. Will I ever learn to let go of the illusions, or must I ruin my life indulging them to fulfill it? How much more of my true peace of mind, well-being, fulfillment... must I trade before I learn to turn away from those generic and boring human needs, and invest myself otherwise?

Long gone are the days I would share my political views and beliefs, passionately and almost obsessively, I actually hold a more moderate stance now. I’m done being angry all the time at things I can’t control. But I ended up having only myself to talk about. I don’t hang out with people nor do anything impressive, so I mostly don’t have any funny or cool stories to share. I don’t do something that somebody else would want to consume. I’m mostly in my head.

If I were a poet or a botanical artist, it’d be easier. I could turn my observational skills, my contemplative and inquisitive nature, into something of value. I could write or draw something interesting. But despite being told that I write well (I have no pretense of being a budding author, mind you), it seems my head won’t focus on anything but myself, and my depression and struggles.

It’s hard to make something interesting out of the personal, individual experience of something so dark and dull as depression. At the stage where I am I could not even dispense advice, I am struggling so much. Listing out the symptoms is one thing, but who wants to read about what “self-deprecating thoughts” feel like in a diseased brain? How does one convey the exhaustion that swallows the days, brushes off duties, dims out all joy? Why even mention the uphill battle of daily life, since it should be said daily for anyone to grasp how heavy everything feels? And then there’s the stuff alongside the depression, stuff that is made more difficult by it, like social anxiety—which feeds back into the existential pain of having to live in a human body, with its biological reliance on others for well-being.

It’s the only thing I have in mind. It’s the only thing I can talk about, really. I was told recently that some “friend” called me self-centered a few years back. Which I took... not nicely. She was probably right to some extent, but it’s not like I don’t think of others—it’s that my understanding of others is warped. There is so much I have never known how to do right. I tried so hard, but it was never good enough. I denied myself, and kept tweaking what they said was wrong with me. It’s funny how self-centered you can be when you’re trying to be selfless. I find it funnier even that she called me “self-centered” when she couldn’t even communicate properly and genuinely with me, going off on her own assumptions and standards. A nice case of the pot calling the kettle black.

That’s why I don’t hang out with people. I have nothing to talk about, I can only listen, and I don’t know how to behave anymore. One part wants to hold onto my precarious social skills, the other is writhing with pain and disgust and helplessness—yearning for authenticity.

I was no so involved with my dad (because they were divorced and I lived with mom) that it damaged the relationship at that stage, but I actually had to fight off my mom to be able to make my own choices, decisions, have my own space and own myself. That involved telling her off opening my mail, and chucking her things out of my old nursery room so I could reinvest it and have finally a door that closes, a little privacy, and no laundry hanging above my face every so often. That happened when I was about 14, and it took 3 years to get rid of all her stuff because she just didn’t want to grant me my space.

A recent conversation with a neighbour brought to light that they had hung out together and, during their conversations, mom would say things like “A child shouldn’t have their own room, a child doesn’t have a right to privacy”. Said neighbour found that so shocking that she still remembers it. She reported to me that during my absence my mother would sometimes lay out and dry laundry in my room, as a way to reappropriate the space in her mind. I’m not surprised because I knew she went into my room despite my protestations, and I would often find things misplaced etc.

More surprising to me is discovering that she blatantly lied to me. The door to my bedroom has a lock, but I had not seen the key in a long time so I could only lock it from the inside with the big turning button. When I asked her about it, she said she didn’t know where it was, that it was lost. After her passing, I got hold of her keychain and was able to unlock her door to dig up paperwork, however of the 6 keys I suspected one would unlock mine, and.... bingo. She held onto the key every day of her life, and used it as a way to trepass or keep a hold onto my right to privacy.

In a similar vein, she may have kept away a golden pendant her mother gave to me when we were on a trip to Malaysia when I was age 12. Back at home, she said that I was too young and that I’d lose it, and that she should have it for safekeeping until I grew up. That was the last time I entrusted her with my possessions : I saw it a couple of times afterward, and later she said she didn’t know where it was anymore. I already find it very disrespectful to say you’re going to safeguard somebody else’s thing only to “lose” it later, but sure, shit happens sometimes; however with her track record, I wonder if I’ll find it in some box hidden away (maybe even her safe box at the bank, when I get the succession thing going), as another thing she hoarded, maybe out of nostalgia, maybe out of spite (I wouldn’t put it past her to have been jealous of 12-year-old me who got a precious necklace from her own mom and to have thought it was rightfully hers)... Things she also did behind my back was going through my stuff and fishing photos and information, before putting the stuff back — after having taken note of it, or having photocopied it. I’ve already found a number of those documents.

Suffice to say that it all leaves a very bitter aftertaste. The taste of betrayal, of disrespect, of baseless distrust. The taste of feeling bad all those years, the ignominy of being an ungrateful, “bad daughter”, for only trying to preserve myself and let myself grow. The taste of thinking you know someone and can trust them, only to realize how much they hid from you, lied to you, degraded you in their heart. The taste of having to accept that they kept the upper hand, that you could not talk to them on an equal footing, be heard, informed, respected—and that all you could do to save yourself was keep looking over your shoulder, snarl and bite. That was the only kind of “no” they would ever understand.

I was not nurtured into an emotionally secure and strong individual, capable of facing challenges and relationships with reasonable confidence. Instead I had to fight and fight again against the trespassing, negligent, and sometimes abusive behavior of my parents. I had to fight them, I had to fight what I was being molded into. But it did not make me stronger. It made me tired.

I’m tired of fighting on for something I’ve never really known: peace, safety, openness, acceptance. I don’t know what it looks like, and it seems I cannot build it for myself out of theory: I can’t behave in a way that attracts people without feeling disingenuous and hollow, I push away people that come to me, I chase what’s out of reach, I can’t walk away because I don’t know any better.

My mother had a fantasy self of being a homemaker, or at least a cook. To that end she bought countless utensils and cooking devices — though she never got herself a proper oven or cooking fires. Afraid of gas, she was. So instead she relied on the microwave and other “quick and easy” cooking stuff. Even a sort of frozen yogurt/sorbet maker. Not gonna list it out, but suffice to say she had more pans and pots and devices than she ever needed to use: she never really cooked, despite hours spent in front of cooking shows and pages upon pages of notes taken. What she used most were handheld blenders, electric slow cookers, and the damn microwave. Some of the extraneous items ended back in their cartons, piled up in the farther corner of the living room — which over the years turned into a full-blown attic. Most however were just crammed in long-forgotten corners of the kitchen or the corridor, in nondescript plastic bags (so fucking many plastic bags), covered with a decade or two of dust.

The big stuff wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it was sorted, but what really makes things harder are the smaller trinkets, the dust and grime, and the papers. So much paper. Since she was not terribly well organized, I can’t be sure that there’s nothing important or sentimental among the papers and books, so I’ve got to look through it all. Most end up in the bin, but I’ve found treasures. To the pile of recyclables I have to add every box of food, whether it’s plastic or cardboard; lids of jars, plastic and metal bottle stoppers, one-use tupperwares. Also everything is scattered and mingled. I fished clothing from every corner of the apartment, and piled it all up onto her bed before I sort it all in one go. I didn’t expect a monstruous mountain of dusty cloth to be born out of this endeavour. I don’t know where to gather the cooking ware though — leaving it in the kitchen is a drag on daily tasks, but worse is that I dunno where to put the food.

Piles and piles of food. My mother believed she had to stock up on food, in preparation for an upcoming disaster, like a war or an earthquake. She likely had a paranoid personality disorder. I grew up seeing her like this, having to listen to her secretive yet grandiose blurbs, so it felt “normal”, barely more than quirky and embarrassing. Only when she was hospitalized did I first have a doctor tell me they suspected she had a real psychiatric issue. I didn’t have time to truly digest the information and its implications, and they didn’t have time to have her definitively assessed, because she died the next day. I wish things had turned out differently; but then again she would have had to be a different person: one that acknowledges she may have a problem, one that takes actions to resolve the problem. Paranoiacs are particularly tricky since they are so wary. But if she had been treated, who knows? Maybe she wouldn’t have buried herself in that dark apartment, surrounded by trinkets she never used or enjoyed or remembered, and by tons of food, a lot of it stale, past due, or eaten up by pantry moths.

So that’s what I’ve been tackling for the past month. Shaking up dust and pantry moth webs and shits, in order to sort the edibles from the garbage. Emptying jar upon jar, bottle after bottle, box after box, and sorting the plastic and cardboard from the glass. Getting all that trash out. Changing dirty and torn-up gloves for new ones. Vacuum the dust when I can, and scrubbing and mopping when the dirt’s settled. Untangling cables, emptying cupboards, making piles of sorted stuff and then drowning them with some other unsorted mess because there’s nowhere else to put anything.

And worrying (or rather: knowing full well) that all of this is detracting me from the paperwork I have to tackle; the people I need to talk to, email, call; the forms to fill and the references to provide. And feeling exhausted all the time, no matter rain or shine, but my mood and energy take a sharp dip every week or two; dips from which I can only recover by sacrificing more precious time by letting loose and staying in bed doing nothing, or zoning out on a chair, sometimes (but rarely) outside. Too often for days on end.

I’ve tried to remain social, but there’s really only 2 people I want to see and talk to, and only 1 of them with whom I’m entirely comfortable doing so. I can’t reach out to my family, I don’t know them well, I don’t want to rely on them more than I already have. It looks like I’ve offended some, and I don’t know how to deal with it in a way that’s both OK with them and genuine. It adds to my worries.

I’ve tried scheduling my time, but the dips hit without regards for any plans. And there’s the anxiety, like a fat bubble of queasiness that suffocates me from the inside (a little to the left of my chest, near the throat), yet feels incredibly heavy, like it robs me of all strength to move. And then I procrastinate. But sometimes procrastination takes a better form, like when I tidy instead of doing the admin stuff. However the worst times are the complete confusion. When I can’t hold a thought, when all my will escapes and my wits can’t drag it back.

I forget so many things that I have to do. Actually, I’ve started forgetting where I put my stuff. There’s stuff that gets misplaced all the time, but I normally know where I’ve put my own paperwork, or my tools. Recently I’ve started to forget, to rack my brains trying to remember how I organized my life. Most of my stuff remains in my bedroom. I’ve only moved out some hygiene stuff to the bathroom, and dishware and cutlery to the kitchen (yes I kept my own cutlery in my room, as well as a dish and bowl, and my mugs). There rest is in my room, mostly unchanged — yet I forget.

The usual symptoms for depression are not helped by the fact that there is so much I have to wrap up, and now I’m also facing a little wardrobe malfunction that may be costly, in money or energy, to resolve: all my jeans are ripped at the inseam. Except the boyfriend jeans, which look baggy and plain trashy with their huge holes, but at least they don’t threaten to let my crotch loose... Dedicating time for a shopping session is really not what I want to do.

While I wish all of this matter could be reviewed, recouped—while I wish it would all amount to something, I can’t deny that right now it’s only clutter. I just don’t have the mental bandwidth, the energy, the focus to make anything of it. I just brain-vomit, day after day, probably going round in circles. People say I write well, but I have no idea what I would write about. In the end writing is the conveyor of a message: those who bear a strong message are more likely to make a compelling read than a more flourishy vacuity. I don’t feel like I have anything to say. I’m a busy shell, a very empty echo chamber playing the same disconnected thought samples, completely over the place, abuzz, without direction or harmony.

My latest idea, as I’ve hinted above, was to vlog. It’s an attempt to log this time of my life, to sum up everything I’m thinking and feeling. But again, besides rambling, I’m having trouble figuring out what I would talk about, or do and show. Everything’s a mess, a big ball of converging circumstances triggering confusing emotions and thoughts, and by the time I’ve managed to pull out one thread to weave into coherence, a dozen more have appeared, competing for my attention.

It’s a race against time, and against my humanity. My limitations. Every day is a race against my basic needs, and while I want to do things, there’s the shadow of everyday living breathing down my neck. I have to properly sleep and feed myself, I have to mind my hygiene and my social life, lest I fall apart (more than the usual, I mean). And when I do get the bulk of these things out of the way, then I’m faced with the noise again, at full volume. Instead of channeling it, I find myself turning away from it. I jot it down and do something else. Something unrelated; something unrelevant. Even with all the time in the world and more energy, I’m motionless.

Logging and tracking and taking notes and learning... can only do so much. Soon enough it’s all clutter, all a distraction, all a bandage over my oozing brain.

I repeatedly told my therapist I feel frustrated with how long this recovery thing is taking. And I feel like some things are getting worse rather than better. As she replied, recovery is comparable to tidying a cluttered room: it takes the time it takes, and it often gets worse before it gets better. That trying to rush it, or to bypass it, often makes things much worse. Despite wanting clarity and serenity, it seems I can’t help but exteriorize, pile up the crap, and also feel anguished about it. I write down too many things for me to process later on. I have multiple outlets, but none to grant me the quiet I crave. And all of that is only circling the actual problems—it’s a distraction.