Reticent Cerulean

This thought has been prevailing and colonizing the back of my head for a while now. It started off light, I didn’t want to give it attention because I was starting to feel low and this is how anxiety kicks in. Few weeks after starting clinical years of med I felt pretty well. The nagging thought of death and dying disappeared as I drastically changed how I behave around people. Now, it keeps hunting my head again. It is not as light as before and deep inside me I want to blame my consciousness that decided to stay alert to all stories about death.

When I was younger I always had a speculation about what it’s like to live with missing someone because of death. I thought, it shouldn’t be nearly similar to not talking to a friend for years and loosing/ not finding all ways to contact them. I made stories in my head about loosing real friends and imaginary people raising me unconsciously I would cry with these daydreams and I would feel the weight.

This weight is different. Even though I don’t know any real person who died, I was concerned about a friend’s relative who out of the blue collapsed and was paralyzed. She was getting nearer to her wedding day. A few days back she passed away, leaving her mom traumatized in a way I could pretend to imagine but never really feel it. I didn’t know her, never met her, yet, asking doctors around at university and trying to come up with reasons she went paralytic sent me in this spiral of contradictory hope and hopelessness. Knowing of her death has made my already exhausting day even more wrecking ; and what’s worse is I can’t find the right words to describe the kind of anguish I feel.

It is thick, heavy, almost like tar, slowly sliding on my chest and suffocating me mentally and emotionally more than it is physically. I could try to push it away, get up from this tar rut, but I just stare at it. Inside my head I feel unsettled but not restless; again slowly approaching another numbing depressive episode.

It has been a very very long time since I have watched any series. And for a while I was away from all kinds of visual arts and with no company to speak of I felt pretty deserted. But for some reason a couple weeks back I suddenly remembered wanting to watch Simon Pegg’s Spaced. I looked it up and in a very lucky moment I found it on YouTube. I just finished watching it today- have been trying to watch one episode or two max in a day so I wouldn’t engulf it all whole at such little time. The last episode really did make me teary- and eventhough Simon Pegg and Jessica hynes would not want to have a sad ending I still found it very heart warming closing to tears.

There’s this sentence Tim says to Marsha to try to bring her back home that’s says, “ they say the family of the 21st century is made up of friends and not relatives...” I thought that summed up the whole series, and defined to me why I feel the way I do.

Imagine having someone love you as much as you do. Remembering your name is not a chore, is not disappointing, does not bring hurt feelings with it. Your existence matters to your friend as much her existence matters to you. You both celebrate your days together by valuing the intimacy you built as you spoke to each other about various things in your life, good bright and enthusiastic days where you looked forward to do something, bad and low days where the world seems like a burden, only to be relieved by her presence, a soothing smile is enough to make you accept the unacceptable.

The existence of someone so dearly in your life makes all the difference in your choices, your ways of showing your compassion, your attitude towards yourself.

I don’t know what to do. I am lost. Under this crust called skull lays a jelly thing that kneads itself onto itself. It doesn’t know how to help me, it doesn’t know what to say to me and I’m not sure it knows that it just needs to dig in a little down below.

It is an irritatingly emotional thought. I want you to stay, I want to commemorate our friendship everyday, I want to hug you, I want to share my excitements and disinterests and depressive episodes with you , I want to cry to you, I want to tell you how I feel uncomfortable when things go smoothly and ok in general, I want to find out why I hate this homeless place, I want you to stay my friend. But you don’t want this anymore. You probably already got over my memory long time ago when you were smarter and decided to forget the past. I don’t know if I should lament you or agree with you. I am hurt. I want to tell you that I am hurt you don’t consider me someone you know anymore. I don’t care if you’re busy, I don’t care if you text me a week or two after I send you a lengthy one; I just want you to show me you’re here. Prove to me that you are reading what I tell you, what I’m coming to you with.

I want to tell you that I’m very vague inside my head. And that my love for people is becoming a real thing but it has taken me time to trust anyone and I still go through phases of confusion and uncertainty when it comes to doing so. I want to tell you I don’t trust anyone, and I don’t want to keep strings between me and anyone else. I also want to tell you that I feel horrible for not being able to have strings attached to people.

It has been 4 years but only in the past 4 months since I learned how to drive the car have I got this weird self confidence and assurance. I no longer freak out if someone hates me or doesn’t like my presence; I might be the one that purposefully and silently project such a feeling, such an energy because I don’t like their presence either. I no longer hate everybody just because my anxiety told me to; I now appreciate all existences and try to put myself in there spot when they act benevolently out of nature. I want to tell you that I love myself now that I take myself out on dates and I walk around boring places just to understand why they bore me. I want to tell you that I so many times miss having you or someone like you , a friend what else, when I have a new crush on someone or when my favourite musician comes out with something new in years or when something really intrigues my instability or furiates me.

But I can’t tell you all that can I?

I don’t know if you forgot me or forgot how to be a friend. Or being a friend to someone else is different? I don’t know you anymore.and what bothers me the most is that you don’t care. You gave me pointless excuses of why you don’t care. I don’t know how to feel about it.

I want to tell you a lot of things. I am more than lost inside my head, hoping that a right time will come soon and I can speak out my mind to you. Your coming has been longed for and I couldn’t feel more ecstatic about it. The air you sweep my hair by, the scent of all earth has given to me, the smell of clean people, the tone of calm and neutral feeling people... I have missed this. But even with such tranquility I have what bothers me. You come in the time when enjoying you is scarce; time filled with ugly moments of anxiety and hair-pulling tension. I wake up very early everyday just to smell you from the windows of a room I’m locked inside. The longer the days last like this and the more they are, the further away my nostalgia to you fades. I slowly start to get accustomed to your scent, forget you chill, ignore your peaceful bringings. The thing is, I would have not had a problem being accustomed if I have encountered it at first. I rather just found it happening, became busy with something else, and completely ignored you. For that I am sorry, but I can not control it either.

Once there was an indie band of my very deep interest. The front man was not too gorgeous nor ugly; wouldn’t necessarily attract all the girls’ eyes. He had a certain sense with words and his choice of verbals and how to sing them always seemed to have a meaning behind it. His band weren’t merely pieces of instruments performing and having a good time; they were really close. He wouldn’t be able to breath without them and they wouldn’t be able to perform without him.

One day they woke up realizing he doesn’t sound the same. And he can’t get his aural sense back. They thought it was something sudden; while in fact it’s been a progressing aging procedure. He has been out of balance for years, consumed by very polar things, unable to gain his own self inside the world he owns.

Later he realized he can’t be the same either, and he can’t feel the music he prepares every month to bring on stage. So he decided to quit.

The band members were obviously traumatized, and couldn’t hold it in secretly. His impact printed on them skewed all over the fans they had. No one understood what was happening or what had happened, but this wave of depression was glaring inside their nostrils like wind when the car drives so fast.

The rest of the band couldn’t really stay like this for long; there are still people they have to play in front, a long season of touring and memories still need to be made. So they had to find someone to be next in alignment, takeover the front man’s position just temporarily until they can have the time to think everything through.

But they know.

Everybody knows.

The front man is irreplaceable.

I’ve been having an oddity of feelings lately. They are not nostalgic enough to be called so, nor are they known ones I’ve felt before. This is a combination of an image/ scenery, a float-ish sensation, and some very random and not too tangible sprinkle of hope.

I haven’t been able to pinpoint what could be bothering me the past days; and as uni started again I have lost a little of myself that I always do when I’m around people. But these feelings creeping in in a way I’m not mad at nor do I feel strangled by, makes me a little anxious.

Just yesterday I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep and had spent them in this dream I get from time to time in different parts in the same place. This time I was free; inside my greyish/white raw silk dress, it felt as if it can swim around me. My hair was not the endlessly bothering curls I have, instead it was soft and wavy flaring slightly behind me neck only making me feel the kind of freedom when some wind try to dare to blow. The scenery befronting my eyes was my favourite things combined: a dark sky with orange lights on my left and a very calming and mysterious sea on my right. There must’ve been a bridge but that is where I used to be running on in the other dream variations. In the back of my head I can think of this man I like , standing somewhere invisible to my eyes but not to all my other senses. I feel a little chilly but not so much because I know I love feeling cold.

I don’t understand you anymore. I see your symbols anywhere I go and I cry for no clear reason. Fashion stores put my superficial dreams aside. Girls whether teens or my age don’t look like me or act any similar. I am not sure how to feel. A while ago I attempted to mimic “girl routine” like getting hair done at a salon and facials and such. I went to a curly studio and lightened my onyx head to burnt brass. I got a cut I despise seeing on anyone let alone my own face. I came out spending much more than I wished to and felt crappy the entire time. There I’ve seen “women” or what my ugly community describes as women. They looked, to my inner head, as normal people getting shit done; but my irritating naïveté begged arrogance and disgust. I couldn’t bare feeling anxious and sick inside. I know very well that my features don’t necessarily attract a donkey to attract a man; but I still take pride in my choices, solely believing that there will be someone who won’t describe me as a fat cow.

But being there at the salon brought up all sorts of discomfort. And I left feeling six feet under.

My mom who has been begging me endlessly to attempt looking more like the girls by straightening my hair and splattering paint on my face didn’t like the look I got either. I knew she’d react that way and I was trying to like the way I looked so I can drown my mad thoughts and hers somewhere far away.

Not a week later I got a dark brown box dye and got my hair colour back. It feels horrible, it looks horrible with that cut, I feel shit too. Now I am in perfect harmony with my self.

Where are you love?

It’s been so long since I last smelled your air; clean lightweight just like you. I missed the way your birds sing in the morning; not as angry or obnoxious as in the heat’s fatal days. I miss lying down and hearing not one single noise from air conditioning or fans; just the odd sound of electricity boxes and sometimes not even that- silence in its most harmonious form. I miss your dark skies and your misty mornings, softly asking everyone to stay home or just not speak. The way everyone smells when you’re around, it startles me how clean can someone be, and how disgusting existence is too. I miss not having to wake up mad, hating the day I came to life, being a burden to my own soul. I wait for you , so dearly, just so I can sit down and not feel that way. I miss flipping the pillow to the other side and finding it unfriendly-cold and still enjoying it because warmth means so much more when you’re here. I miss the coziness of my half sleeve cardigans with all grey to match you and myself together. I miss the clamness you bring- really surprising to see people so loud and angry and intolerable to soft and happy and careless at some points. I miss you so much that I would not mind living in you forever; not afraid of ever getting used to you or becoming bored of how settled everything is. You are the one thing in my life that I can so boldly speak of how much I love, of how much I know the reasons why I love, and dare anyone that says you’re ugly or dead or helpless. You make the sun have a reason to wake up to see and the moon to have a reason to stare at it disappear. Please come more often, I hate the heat taking to much of your time. We can sit silently staring at each other and forget how annoying everyone and everything is. You wouldn’t even feel my weight no matter how big I looked. I promise you I’m the most peaceful, I abide by your rules even when you’re not around,I do my best to hold my temper and imagine you here. But sometimes it is just so hard and heavy to not have you. Please bring beautiful songs with you; I have the best emotional reactions to music when you’re around. The only reason why I ever loved Ben Howard or Daughter or Low Roar or Gem Club is because of you. It is just something that your stillness and the eerie ambiguity in their sounds that blend so well; so so well that I can almost feeling my fingers twitch with my favourite guitar riffs.

Tomorrow marks my 21st birthday and I couldn’t feel more numb about it. Last year’s was a depressing one in which I felt like a burden with too much useless time on hand. I don’t necessarily feel any different, I might’ve even reached a point where waking up in the morning feels so major that I don’t know how to accept it.

Is this a normal feeling people get? I know I tend to exclude myself from rational situations but I have a slurring feeling that a lot of people feel burdensome more than the usual these days.

A while back I watched this video for hank green explaining why it is hard to make friends and his point was we ignore the fact that we are humans and overlook human qualities and replace them with the materialistic values we want from each other. With that I have felt so bothered by the idea of even communicating if my own existence didn’t mean anything to anyone but the fact that I have to have something physical and tangible on my table so someone would be bothered to see my face or even acknowledge I am actually real. And with that came back an irritating memory of this friend I tried to make a year back but since has only complained to me about his girlfriend and nothing else; as if I was made to be the romantic therapist; I have never even been in a relationship before and don’t necessarily view such relationships interesting in anyway. But for him our friendship seemed to only depend on his ignorant talks all about himself. I remember feeling really low one time and he asked me what’s wrong and I took on writing an entire essay of how horrible I feel hoping he would really read but instead forgot to reply back and never asked me about anything again. I remember feeling so broken inside because I’m not someone to share my emotions so easy with people and he didn’t even bother validating that he read what I’ve sent. And if I don’t check on him and try to “catch up” I don’t exist.

Don’t get me wrong I love listening to others and I appreciate it when someone shares their problems with me but with him I felt like he was just trying to pass the time with me like I was just unbearable that he would speak of anything that would” seem” interesting to me. And since I’m a fat lonely girl what could possibly interest me but relationship problems.

It’s been a while and by a while I mean a couple weeks or so since I last wrote something on one of my notebooks.

Right this second marks the time I decided to do a few changes that seem so major in the heat of the moment but mean little to nothing before and after it has happened. Letting go of things that might’ve meant something before is really harsh especially with over sensitive people like me; holding so dearly to the memories that might not even be so exciting or very true. I’ve been trying to do the Kon Marie thing for a year; but never really committing to let some things go.

Part of these things are books.

They’re just books, I don’t remember what I felt with them, reading them or holding them, maybe a very sheer memory of sitting on my classrom’s desk having my face hug my suffocating breasts as I stuff my thought in something other than the extroverted loud noise I was surrounded by. That’s probably the only memory I have of them.

But I realized as I was separating the ones I want to keep and the ones I will give that I don’t even remember the books’ stories as well as my homesickness and irritating nostalgic flashbacks. My friends that I don’t think would remember me now, the teachers that saw me read, that one teacher that was trying to encourage me not to keep my head low in a book for my entire time, the following years of changes in friends and who can bare me and who can’t...

And then vague thoughts of what I liked and didn’t come back like sparse light from under a closed door. Nothing is clear nothing is obvious but all I know for sure is that I want to cry. And even with such a feeling I have a heavy head trying to pull back and let go the things that I’ve been ignoring since I moved to this place, since I decided I want to “mummify” anything I have of my old house and my old and only home.

I then contacted a “used books reseller” and took a picture of all the books I don’t want to see ever again or have the feelings flood by from them. But again, something bothered me.

The price for what they would be resold for is unknown to me but as I would give all these books I would get paid such an amount I find very mere of what they would sell for used.

Again inside my anxiety trying to make the best of me; asking me not to give them away and keep them near, these are one of the few things left of that place that is actually tangible.

Something I find irritating about my anxiety is my inability to comment on social platforms. Out of all the things that spike my sympathetic system in horrible ways, this has got to be the worst. Whether it’s commenting on a video I really want to scream my lungs to, an Instagram picture that made me a little teary, a TED talk I agree/disagree with; it all just piles in front of me and makes me panic. I’d type a whole essay and then I delete it in seconds. I think it comes from me not being around real people, not sparking any kind of real conversation when I am , freaking out instead because I only hear what they say about what they don’t like.

Since spending time alone means mostly observing, I have started finding it odd to see human express emotions on there faces. Where I live, people are either mad or holding on to a neutral face to cover whatever deceitful or depressed souls they have. When someone smiles, at me or just in general, I find it very intriguing. You have lips? You can move them? Stretch them? Your forehead, it also wrinkles. How can such an emotion flow from you, flow from someone that forgot how to be the so called and mainstreamed kind and generous person?

How can anyone show emotions on their faces? And what happened to the time when that was easy? When that was the “thing” ?