serotonin.

"the best way to cheer yourself is to cheer someone else up"
                      -mark twain


2019.

for once, my new year resolutions have nothing to do with exercise or quitting things or sticking to hobbies. those kinda goals never seem to work out.
this time, i guess its something special. it is to me.

the first few seconds of 2018 i told myself i'd do whatever it takes to become happier. over the next twelve months, maybe i did actually improve. but with that new found clarity i only just realized how truly unhappy others are. it's not unheard of; people afflicted with depression thinking that they bear the brunt of all suffering. but after eleven months of treatment, i'm starting to realize there's absolutely nothing that'll bring you a faster cure than to make people around you happy (the way you wish you felt). i'm gonna do that.

this post isn't monumental but the vow i'm making that's hidden underneath all of this is.

there's someone i love. someone i would give the whole world to if i could. someone for whom i'd sacrifice being happy just so they'd feel happy. i'm young and it's so so typical of us to think this kinda love lasts.most of the time it doesnt, i know that.

thats not my focus though, none of that is. stripping away experience and statistics, i know for sure there is nothing i wouldn't do for them. therefore this whole year is for them.

i want them to be happy. to see things the way i started seeing it the moment i met them. it's gonna be so so tough but its okay. i'd stay up days and days if that's what they needed. i have no clue what the next twelve years hold for us, for them, for me, for anyone. but there's some sort of comfort in that cluelessness; knowing that it's mine for the taking. nothing's written in stone, it really isn't.

this day in twelve months; you're gonna be reading this. i don't know what's happened because all of it feels surreal right now. i hope everything's worked out the way you wanted it to.
if it hasn't, it's okay.

because it always turns out to be okay. 

his personal paparazzi.

''pictures flashed on her in sudden color, too much color, shocking color, the color that leaps out of black when lightning strikes at night"
                                 -thomas harris, the silence of the lambs.



flashback. flashback. flashback.

the picture of flashback mary on the runway scared him to death; he threw away all of his setting powders, bought new ones, threw them away too. no setting powder for him. cutting back to the mess in front of him on the bathroom counter, the vanity mirror magnified it twice. no setting powder for the first time and he blames it on the brands with no consideration for low quality cameras.

but he looks at the polaroid in his hand. absolutely no flashback. his white coat showed up well, each strand of fur stood out with the camera flash hitting them different ways. there were clumps here and there, nothing too drastic because he knows with fur coats comes great need to brush the tangles away. he knows all too well about tangles.

his gold highlight caught the light of the cars driving by. they stopped by the highway, took a little detour a kilometer left into a field. the only source of light was a rundown grocery store (a liminal space). although the picture turned out well, he owes it to his partner's penchant for grain and good film. nobody expected anything to actually show up but here it was, polaroid in his hand.

his skin tone was tainted orange. a little bit of tan, it seemed like, so he didn't mind. the lighting, or lack thereof, resulted in all of his blemishes vanishing. no flashback and natural photoshop; he couldn't have asked for more. he didn't know how photography worked, that's what his partner was there for. his job was to pose. but the juxtaposition between the backdrop of the highway and his white coat stood out to him the way his right foot was positioned; tilted to the left but heels straight; planted in a position yet with little deviation.

his hair was pink, it threw tints of orange back at him through the polaroid- a result of l.e.d headlights back on the highway. it lead down to his neck, almost forming a mullet. his adam's apple was highlighted making it seem a lot more protruded than it did in the mirror. his jaw was strong; it's shadows barely lessened the glaring highlight on his neck.

the slope of his nose threw shadows on the left side of his face, his eyes still twinkly- a feature all his photographers seemed to love. the blush worked its charm, complementing his hair color. the dip between his nose bridge and his eye socket was dark, his eyebrows bordered it while the groove of skin under his eyebags ended it. there were pieces of flying hair; a windswept look on a night with no wind, only dry and damaged hair could do that. he ran his hands through his hair as acknowledgment for the damage done to it.

his eyes trailed back to the polaroid gripped tightly between his fingers, it was creasing. he lightened his grip and tried to straighten the little dips as he stared again at his face on the film. the area where his ear lobe and neck met was hazy. the long chain of his earring was the only thing he could see in clarity over there. the silver caught the tiniest bits of light as well. the rings and the chains of his three piercings formed an intricate pattern of silver in the dark. he looked carefully.

his hand trailed to the border of the polaroid, thumbing away at a sentence in black marker.

''19.4'' it read. a little heart embellished to the side. he tucked it away in his pocket, patting it twice as if to turn the key in the lock halfway one more time than needed.

he walked away and all we could see were the scuffed louboutin heels marking the marbled floor. 

movement.

"we didnt need dialogue. we had faces!'
                  -sunset boulevard, 1950


if there's anything that's stuck in my brain from 6th grade science, it's conduction, convection and radiation. three types of heat.
to be honest, i never bothered to actually remember the definitions or even try to understand them. but i do remember that one carries, one transfers and the other,,,radiates.

four years later and i still can't figure out why that's stuck with me for so long. since then, i've learnt way more unnecessary stuff. i've derived equations for refraction through glass slabs, i've done many questions on snell's law, i've learnt the theory behind the tyndall effect but there's really nothing i remember as clearly as those three words in my sixth grade science reader.

they were right below each other, bold arial. there were three diagrams in a row showing how each type of heat differs from each other. and i don't know where i'm going with this but it's become an integral part of my memory.

there's lots of vivid memories like that.

the hadopelagic zone.

"i see dead people"
              -the sixth sense, 1999


climate change. what a hoot, yeah?

that's not what this post is about. i'm not qualified to talk about the fancy things like the ipcc graphs but i do know that having storms bad enough to flood districts in a country where the average temperate is hot enough to boil alcohol is not normal.

it's thundering at this very moment, and as someone with 90% ego, 10% humility, it's not easy for me to say i cannot handle thunder. everything about it chills me to the very bone. it scrapes away at my skin, layer by layer, stretches out the veins and pierces fear through down to my marrow. and as practical as it would normally is, music isn't helping. i know it's thundering. and just that mere awareness is not letting me rest easy.

i'm thinking about the euthanasia coaster. in specific, i'm thinking about g-force induced loss of consciousness(g-loc). aerospace physiology is not something i'm really into but this concept blows my mind.
if you've read all the bright places, you know what i mean. the euthanasia coaster uses sustained extreme g-force to drain the blood from your brain which causes your brain to ''suffocate'' which leads to euphoria. then loss of consciousness. then you die.

or so they say.

it might just cause you extreme nausea but that's something most soon-to-be mothers go through every morning as well. sure, the roller coaster hasn't been built yet but lately i've been feeling like i'm on my own euthanasia coaster. and perhaps i'm on the last few loops.

there are ten loops in total.
each a stage closer to fatality

pilots go through a few seconds of alleged euphoria during flight but it's never long enough to cause sustained damage. gravity is deadly. i came across a site in the evening that demonstrates how gravity influences the space-time warp and i'm beginning to think i was wrong when i said months ago that i want to exist without wondering about the consequences.

when you slip into the seat of the one car the euthanasia coaster has, you're really just thinking about the journey ahead. when you turn into the first vertical loop, the first g-force hits you. you're still thinking about the journey ahead. second loop, third loop, fourth loop, suddenly there's no more journey ahead.

but who knows if you're really gonna spend your last few moments suspended in raw euphoria or just plain run-of-the-mill nausea?

colour.

"to live is to keep moving"
               -jerry seinfeld



the colour palette for winter never matched the desert country. the backdrop's red but the grey comes in, weaving itself into the periphery of every scenery you set your eyes on. it clashes. but who cares if it clashes? the grey doesn't turn up on camera- it's far too faint- and as long as it doesn't ruin your pictures, who cares?

6:32pm. halfway through a 5 mile run. the sun is setting. it's 10 degrees according to the temperature tower but it feels like 6. there's a cat on one of the rocks overlooking the sea. she doesn't jump, she won't.

a lamppost flickers on and suddenly every dust particle in the world resides between those oscillating beams of light. dead skin. that's what they are. decay and dirt; and that's all you can focus on for the next few minutes.

your socks are slipping closer towards your ankles and your shoelaces are coming undone. your slicked back hair is now just slick with sweat. there are kids a decade younger than you cycling around. their bikes have wheels that light up different colors and handlebars that could serve as a personal disco ball for the nights you spend alone. all you have are worn out shoes and hair that insists on entering your mouth every time you part your lips to gulp in air. you have never felt this helpless.

the sky is dark. it's not going to turn into the ultramarine hue you wanted your bedroom to be when you were six years old. the peripheral grey just gets harsher by the minute. so you tie your shoelaces and keep moving.

apartment therapy.

"find yourself a cup of tea, the teapot is behind you. now tell me about hundreds of things"
                                    -saki


walmart sells those little fluffy blankets for 9 dollars. i'm on the other side of the world where walmart and target are nothing but stores we hear about online. i want those little fluffy blankets and 9 dollars isn't a huge sum of money. i want them.

it's been cold here lately, i.e it's 27 degrees celsius which is an all-time-low compared to the temperatures of the last five months. cyclic tests start in eight days and i'm not sure about how prepared i am. i mean, i'm definitely a bit more prepared than i was last time but a direct strike to my confidence a month ago has left me reeling in shock. it happens, i guess. luckily the previous round of exams wasn't counted for our final grade. 

this was a little check-in i guess. i haven't slept enough to write something more. 

interdependency.

"every man lives by exchanging"
                      -adam smith


"we were in school, and just like you, we had teachers we were absolutely terrified of. it was a lot stricter at that time. people weren't scared to hit back in the 1980's, they'd take a yellow ruler collecting dust on the desk and make sure your hands were red and inflamed by the end of five very, very unfortunate minutes"

"one teacher took an extreme pleasure in calling out any student he wanted and delivering ten rather strong raps on the palm of their hand. sometimes they'd end up crying but that really didn't do much other than sweeten the deal for the old man. on days we were particularly obedient, he made sure somebody would be blamed for the floorboards creaking and he'd set off on his daily routine. ten raps to the hand. stern warning. then we'd turn back with our palms stinging too much to pick up a pencil for the rest of the day"

"fifteen years later, our entire year was called for a reunion back in the old school building. fifteen years later and all of us had lost hair, moved onto new things- better or worse- we were new people. but something remained within our entire class that was artfully hidden beneath layers and layers of new social interactions. we saw our old teacher, the one with the yellow ruler and the gray glasses.

he had a cigarette between his permanently down-turned lips and was making his way through the crowd, occasionally stopping for a quick second.

"he had taken up chain-smoking as a hobby long before he was our teacher, it was common knowledge. we had never seen it ourselves but here he was, pack of cigarettes in his right hand and the absence of a yellow ruler in the other. for someone who liked to abuse others hands a lot, he certainly paid back with his lungs. eventually he made it close to our group. we stood straight, hands behind our backs and went dead silent. fifteen years later and our respect born out of fear for this man hadn't disappeared"

"any of you have a lighter?" that's all he asked. no hello, no admission of recognizance; just a steady question with a steady purpose. it was fitting. one of the men gathered around us handed him a lighter and he turned around to light the cigarette in his mouth. we didn't know what to say. should we approach him? is he still inclined to hit our palms?''

''i went up to him. "good evening sir", i said. my voice trembled, syllables escaping through hesitant lips. he nodded, i went quiet. another one of my friends came up behind me and said, "hello sir, how are you doing?'' that was smart. a question. i should have asked a question."

"he gave a slow answer, almost as if he was trying to recollect the past ten years or so. we waited, hands stinging in vague memory. we struck up a conversation; the teacher and our group. and we felt freer for it."

"that's exchange.
a lighter for a conversation.
the burning pain of our hands to the burning cigarette."





(a rewritten account of an experience narrated to our class by our hindi teacher on monday, october 15) 

changing it up.

"nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change"
                                    -mary shelley, frankenstein



so for people who have been reading this blog (is this a blog? i'm just complaining on here most of the time)  maybe you've noticed a little change.
well, really three little changes.

there's a page to the side of this text; a little introduction for people who may or may not be interested. it's all the same, all i see is page stats.
the background has changed. i might change it into something different than the normal picture for november and then december but there's time to pass.
i've also added a title! not sure if i like it yet.

i set a goal for myself to attend school every day of this week because my attendance has only been 89% so far this year and dropping below 85% would be bad.
someone else set a challenge for me last night as well. she asked me to write down one to three things about today that made me happy. this was definitely the wrong day for this specific challenge but yknow, it's called a challenge for a reason.

i spent the entire day analyzing the little things, the expressions people make when they're talking to their friends, teachers when they notice the entire class isn't paying attention to them. the way people react when they're given another task as homework- some bitter, some sweet- in a way, not being stable is the only thing we're constant in .

the first thing was this; a classmate came up to me in the first recess and we made a little bit of conversation. i don't usually have any problem striking up conversations with people, especially if i need to impress them. i wouldn't necessarily say i needed to impress this particular classmate but even if it was intentional or not, he came back during the second recess to pick up where we left off. i learned that he wasn't very genuine when he told me he listened to a few bands but i had no problem with it, it gave me an opportunity to introduce new songs to a new person! i learned his favorite song off the trench album is chlorine (happens to be my second favorite) and i learned that he has a habit of binge watching anime no matter how busy he is. that was quite intriguing actually. i can never finish a show without months of a break in between. i don't know what it is, i just lose my passion halfway and come back to it months later and get twice as hooked. but besides the fact that i have commitment issues with shows, talking to a new person made today a little interesting.

i'm not gonna lie, i haven't found three whole things that made me happy per se. it was an okay day, but perhaps the three hours sleep i had gotten last night skewed the way i saw things today.

on the flipside, i've recently gone through an onslaught of identity-related doubts. those are never pleasant. while i'm spending every moment trying to think of ways to make myself a lot more approachable, there's also a little nag somewhere within telling me i'm not doing this for the right reasons.

you don't change yourself for others, you change because you want to; that's a principle everyone knows but hardly anyone follows. i know i never follow it. and i also know i do not want to change. the things i do, the things i'm interested in, the stress relievers i've taken up; they're all a part of a permanent side of me that has been born out of years of deliberation. a little bit of honesty can't really make a whole quadrant of my "identity" vanish no matter how hard i try.

maybe after a few more weeks of this- the doubts, the occasional assurances- i'll realize i'm not as bad as i make myself out to be.

hey, maybe i found a little positivity today after all. 

asleep.

"be afraid.be very afraid"
           -the fly (1986)


i should've been done with my day by now but things have been getting later and later and later and i don't like it.

its been a long time since i've felt this specific feeling; i haven't felt scared to go to sleep at night in months and it was a relief but now it's back and in full force. you know the dread that literally pulls the rug from under your feet after you wake up from an intentionally long nap and you realize you might have trouble sleeping that night?

its that feeling, except i haven't napped and it's making me paranoid.

i came up with this list during our bio class today. our teacher was rambling on and on about monohybrid and dihybrid crosses and complicated ratios- the things i have no passion for. so under the guise of writing lecture notes, i composed a list of different ways to try and fall asleep. 

this is probably not gonna be helpful but i tried

-switch off;
i know!!! generic!!! how do you go to sleep w/o your phone in your hand while its plugged in and youre waiting for it to charge enough so you can flip over to the other side? but thankfully, i don't mean switch off all your technology. we're way too deep to actually give up extra phone time but here's a tip. switch off the social side, the work side, the noisy side. just you and whatever puts you in a good mood.
what i usually do is i turn the brightness all the way down, switch on night mode and read autocorrect fails. it's weird but all that hushed laughing gets me really tired and theres the added bonus of going to sleep happy.

-keep everything you might need close
you don't wanna get up to fetch your water bottle from across the room. you don't wanna reach around in the dark to find a tissue and realize the tissue box isn't there (plenty of reasons you might need a tissue but back to the point). its a cool thing to integrate maybe a lil bit of organization before you go to sleep. do it.

-never ever do a mental checklist
this is the worst part of it, i'm scrolling through all the tasks that needed to be complete and i suddenly realize "oh wait. i missed that out, i have to rush myself in the morning"
it's not a nice feeling but we all do it involuntarily.
the moment you catch yourself thinking about all the work that had to be done, turn over to the other side and wipe your palette. think of comforting things.

-cool and dark
maybe this applies from a philosophical point of view too as i pride myself on owning clothes that are 99% dark and cool. but honestly, few hours before you sleep, dim the lights. it makes you feel a lot more at ease.

-definitely don't drink cold water
when i was browsing through the net myself for ways to stop feeling so panicky before going to sleep, i came across this tip in so many websites; drink cold water.
okay, i get the science behind it; lowers your body temp, uses more energy from you to process- the whole jazz. but will people not acknowledge how quickly you need to go to the bathroom even if you've had just a few sips? maybe this is kinda tmi, but i know it's not just me who feels this way.
drink room temp water for once, don't be a snob about temperature.

-breathe
i forget to breathe sometimes especially before i go to sleep. i'm tossing, turning, tossing, turning and i unintentionally hold my breathe because i'm just that tense. remember to breathe. focus on it. it sounds corny, i thought so too when my dad suggested it to me but honestly, i get where he's coming from. if there's a clock in your room, focus on the tick of it. rhythmic sounds will relax you. use binaural beats if you can- mynoise is a good app for that. it works.
if i need to calm down, i use an airplane cabin audio to focus on because that's one of the few sounds that calms me down.
my point is this, focus on your breathing. don't hold it in. release the stress from your shoulders, jaw, toes, wherever. stay fluid.


-stop worrying about waking up
this is what kills me. it takes every ounce of strength within me not to count down the hours i have left before i need to wake up. most days i get around 4.5 hours, on bad days i get 3. and those bad days happen because i count down- consciously or not.
keep your mind away from time, keep it focused on yourself. imagine going to sleep instead of waking up. it helps, try it.


i'm gonna follow my own advice tonight
and for the next time youre having a rough night, remember it's all gonna be good

autumn.

"when beggars die, there are no comets seen;
the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes''
                                         -calpurnia,act II scene II, julius caesar
                                          william shakespeare


honestly, the thought of having to write something that's not school related had sounded so nice for the past 20 days or so but i never got around to actually starting something. i'm not sure why; writers block? pure laziness? or just a horrible mess of the two?

whatever it was, we're two weeks into october and i am definitely feeling the vibes. i've always liked october, it's always been a chill month but this week wasn't good.
at all.
i genuinely think it wouldn't be an understatement to say that it was the worst week of the year so i'll say it; i'm glad its saturday, the week came to a close.

however i've started this new ''hands on'' approach to the things i didn't like about my current situation; my life in general.
it's my last year in my current school and finding motivation from hidden corners of my brain has become tiring. it's gotten to the point where i spend an hour scrolling through pinterest and cute studyblrs just so i can get started on all the tasks i have over the weekend.
it's not good.

but it's somehow working. it's the effort that counts and that's exactly what i'm putting in.

passport.

"i loved history because to me, history was like watching a movie"
                                         -quentin tarantino



"do you believe in god?'

''kind of, why?''

''pray for me baby, i'm struggling" 

white eyelash.

"i crave the stain
of tears, the aftermark
of almost too much love,
the sweet of bitter bark
and burning clove"
          -robert frost, to earthward



21.12.16

i could imagine myself falling in love.
i could see myself counting down the seconds until i see someone again. just maybe i could give away everything for someone.

i don't see it happening anytime soon. two years? three? whenever it happens, i probably won't act on it. i can see it ending before it even started. i can't start something if i won't let myself give into it. but someday, i'd like to give into it. i'd like to be honest with someone. i'd like to talk to someone for hours on end and end it on the note of talking to them again.

i dont know when.
but i can admit i wouldn't mind it.


9.8.18

two years. i guessed it right.
and wow.

wow.

cacophony.

"first the mania for confession,
then the mania for clarity"
                                 -pier paolo pasolini


exam season is drawing real near. the stress is starting to manifest itself on my face.
so we're three days in and i have held up to all of the resolutions i had made for this month. that's a fairly good sign. i have this habit of writing things i wanna do at the turn of a new month on scraps of paper and then losing them. i guess i lose the will for doing them the moment i lose the paper.

not this month.

although i can't say that i'm really keen on it. i'm kinda holding myself to a much stricter discipline than i used to. i'm up by 5am which is an hour earlier than i'm used to, and i force myself to wrap up all of my work- school or otherwise- by 10pm. my schedule isn't very interesting. it's a whole lot of stress and lack of motivation, i'll tell you that. but anyway, with 11 hours of school eating away 3/4th of the day, i'm left with four spare hours between coming back from school and trying to switch off before 10pm.

lately what's been happening is that all of those four hours are spent in studying for (really pointless) revisions and doing my own set of exam notes. there's honestly barely any time to do things for yourself and it's not just me, it's apparently the case for nearly everybody i know. yeah, the people who genuinely don't do anything is a different scenario but when it comes to the people that give the tiniest bit of a shit, there's nothing you're really doing other than writing and writing and writing.
there's some intense memorization somewhere within there.


my point is,,that there is no point. for real. i can't even be bothered to sound vaguely coherent in these posts anymore, i'm just that lackluster.
i can try as hard as i capable of to complete my work ahead of time but nothing will stop the stress that comes with year 11. and there is no way in hell you can escape late nights. my camera roll is nothing but midterm portions and mark schemes and answers to important questions and i can feel a little twinge of panic every time i look at those screenshots.

overall, it's quite unhealthy.
the second semester is never nice though, and it hasn't been for the past ten years.
this year wasn't about to be any different either, i guess

what about next year?

(lowkey just ranted. i'll come up w/ something mildly entertaining tomorrow) 

analysis.

"our team is good at getting dressed real quick,because we're the type of team that wears their uniforms all day"
                  -jim carroll


just because it's written in words doesn't mean it's a law of the institution.that's probably the only real thing i've learnt over the past two years. who cares if it's written in the almanac that you can't assign more than three subjects worth of homework each day? let's just throw all the damn subjects at those lil pathetic students.

yes. i'm kinda bitter.
i'm also mostly coffee fueled right now so i probably shouldn't be writing this either but from the top 15 countries the audience of this blog is from, the country i live in is just the twelfth, so i'm sure those living in peru or bulgaria won't particularly bother me about sounding slightly loopy.

i've started to sleep a lot earlier nowadays. i've been following this new schedule the last week and a half and so far, everything's become a lot nicer. it's like early bedtimes are the equivalent of pastel filters over an otherwise mediocre picture (don't use filters that enhance the purple in your photos. keep the exposure below 90% and please, for the love of god, stop thinking clarendon is the go-to filter for every damn picture on instagram. it's a pet peeve of mine)

it's the second day of september and once i strip away the painful coughs and the stress thrown at us everyday, it's not been as bad as i thought the first few days back to school would be.i think i said this in the last post as well but honestly, i've never coped as well with work as i've been coping the last week.

i hope that keeps up.

9:45pm. lets wind up.

sound.

"punch, of course"

"of course? i thought he was dead!"

"he's only pretending, to teach her a lesson- 

only--only, he is dead, peter. i saw him-- he's not pretending. 

somebody threw him off a train" 

                                                       -reggie and peter, charade (1963)

since i was gone for almost the whole of last month, i've decided to ease my guilty conscience by writing every day of this month. or at least, nearly every day of this month. 

the first midterms of 10th grade//year 11 start in two weeks, and i may be a little petrified. i spent the last three days sick in bed so i'm not entitled to say that this month has been off to the best start. but on the flipside, i'm getting better and the first week back to school hasn't been as bad as i thought it would be. 

i can't bring myself to write anymore. i'll build up eventually. 

stagnancy.

"the half life of love is forever''
                     -junot diaz, this is how you lose her


learning from your mistakes is one thing, giving into sleep is another. i learnt yesterday that taking a four hour nap in the middle of the day brings you a restless night. i saw the sunrise again, the sky gets a lot bluer than i thought.

i have a week or two left until school reopens. in a way, i'm handling it better than i did last year. i'm not sure if i'm dreading it or looking at it like it's a necessary evil; which i'm sure it is. i have a few more months left in this high school then i'm out- off to a new place where i get to focus on the things that i actually want to focus on.

between eight flights in twenty days, i've been craving to move. just move. go anywhere, do anything but i don't wanna stay stagnant. but that's the thing, i need to stay stagnant until i'm done with school- and that's okay. i understand the way things go now, and if staying put is what it takes so be it.

nobody's necessarily happy in august.

                                         

underwhelm.

"but in my arms she was always lolita"
                         -vladimir nobokov



was there a precursor?

maybe before anger took its shelter within all our syllables, before we had to tuck our tongue behind our teeth-  don't yell, don't yell- it was probably before november 29th. i would believe you, trust me i would, i would listen to you, bare my soul out, i would take everything you said with nothing less than a morsel of doubt. but it's august now. autumn is setting and it's only two months away from november. you're a year too late.

if i had said what i needed to say few days before november 29th, you wouldn't have had to feel that way. you wouldn't have had to stare at your hands, lip between your teeth, skin peeling off your cheeks, and wonder the things you're wondering now. time is a killer. i said i was resilient. i am, i know i am. after five years of picking out the shrapnel out of places i hadn't thought they would have been in, it's the one thing i can say without a little voice piping up saying 'it's not good enough' 

i'm not good enough. you're not good enough. nothing's good enough; what's the basic law of evolution? get better, there's a flaw within you- a pesky little thing within the strands of our dna-the reason we will be wiped out- the reason we have been wiped out five times before. we're not good enough. stop trying to be.

i wish you hadn't told me that. i was content believing i had redeemed myself. but it's back; that onslaught of 'it's not good enough'. it's never going to be good enough, can't you see that? there's a fundamental flaw within my character, i know that, i know i won't accept what you say. i know everything i say is slightly airbrushed, i know there's an icy chill in my wake, i'm aware. i'm painfully aware.

i know evolution leaves no one behind. it won't leave me behind.

deactivate.

"disappear, she says. i love that word"
              -will christopher baer


im not so sure this is the best time to be writing here, it's not been a lovely day per se. but i find myself coming back here after something shifts. maybe shift isnt the right word. its like gears. either they lock out of place or something stops spinning. this time its the latter.

i hope it locks back into place soon.
today's not been my day.

buntings.

"comfort was peculiarly chilling"
                  -shannon a. thompson, seconds before sunrise


im in thailand, koh samui, sitting on the shore overlooking  the south china sea joining with the pacific ocean and im slightly tanned, enough to indicate that ive spent copious amounts under the sun without sufficient sunscreen and im slightly happier, enough to indicate ive been on a holiday to a country you usually go on holiday to.

havana is playing in the background while my slippers are in front of me, halfway buried in sand. ive got an iced soft drink on the table with my backpack serving as a lumpy pillow for me. my neck is sore.i think i'm gonna go for a walk through the shallow part of the sea in a while. i did it two days ago and i walked back onto the beach with a scraped foot from the rocks hiding cleverly in the water.

the wind is blowing really strongly as well. someone's tablecloth just flew off.

there's one single cloud in the sky and the water is reflecting four different shades of blue. one shade is green. there are the world cup's countries' flags hanging as buntings from haphazard sticks standing in the sand. i can't recognize most of them. overall, its a lovely sight. pushing the thought of all the schoolwork i have left right now would make this experience a little bit better.

maybe i should give coconut water a try.  

jazz vs. blues.

"how satisfying it is to leave a mark on a blank surface. to make a map of my movement- no matter how temporary"
           -craig thompson, blankets




nine days.

i travel to thailand tomorrow. i should be excited but i'm not, i'm focusing more on the prospect of having to sleep when there are people in the same room. hotels are fun, but that seems to fade at night.

i've been left alone without any distractions for the past ten days. i haven't been watching any television,  no videos. i guess the only thing i had was a few playlists i made before i visited here. i've come to realize a lot of things as well; it's never worth talking unless you're asked to. i got published on a website for an international writing competition and that was nice. it was nice, it should have motivated me to get back in touch with writing but it hasn't.

i've been thinking about learning how to dj. it seems cool. i'd call myself zombie dude, just saying.

i ordered a bag from tommy hilfiger and it arrived today. that's not really a necessary detail but i woke up today remembering how i haven't opened this site in a week and i felt a twinge of guilt. i hope i wake up feeling calm tomorrow.

there's a 6 hour difference between britain and thailand; that fact has been on my mind alot lately. 6 hours is excessive. i'm getting spoilt when it comes to time differences, i've forgotten what it's like being in touch with people 8 hours away. time zones scare me. when you live most of your life online, you become sort of an expert when it comes to time differences. i wouldn't have known the time difference between tirana and my residing city if i hadn't met someone from there. nor would i have known athens and my residing city share the same time. it's intriguing, sure, but there's always that added danger in finding friends who wake up for school exactly when you call it a night.

i go back home just as august starts. i can't say im necessarily dreading it. i'm looking forward to it knowing the time zone between britain and my residing city gets reduced back to the original two hours.

but who can deny post-holiday blues?

hangars

"we all have these places where shy humiliations gambol on sunny afternoons"
                                                                    -w.h. auden



something tells me im going to be moving around a lot for the next two weeks.
i'm in dubai; it's a lovely place. last september, i visited dubai for two days and i went back home wanting to tear down all the architecture and rebuild it into a skyscraper-laden city.

home is beautiful as it is, but there's a kind of wonder that comes with seeing places you have never been to before.

i reach calcutta tomorrow. calcutta's beautiful; i was there in may and the weather was cool with drizzle hanging around the corner and it was a change- a drastic one from the humid and bleak disposition the city always has in july.

i'm looking at a runway; there's a double decker flight and tons of vans carrying luggage. there's a white light washing everything with a dulled out look. the plane is being reversed by a pushback. i am impatiently waiting.

for the first time since 2009, i am genuinely glad i'm going back to calcutta. we visit every year, but i had always seen in with trepidation. i'm excited this year; which is also relieving, you can't live your entire life hating the city you come from.

spinach and cheese.

"resist the temptation to defend yourself"
                         -brian tracy




last time i sat at starbucks with my laptop in front of me was the day i realized nothing is permanent.
last year, around this time, i was a different person than i am now.

i was quieter, more violent, i thought things that were given to me were permanent. i was perpetually looking down, berating myself for not looking up. dramatic as it may sound, that was quite literally the case. i remember bumping into quite a few people last year.

as the year came to a close, things changed. people left. i fell out of love, i lied to people i shouldn't have lied to; it was a mess. i'm seven months into 2018, i lost my 2 year streak of being clean, i found someone i never want to let go of, i may not be able to look up in confidence yet but there's five months of this year left. a lot can change in five months.

i'm glad.

i'm not content but i'm glad with the way things are.
time is a killer but i've kinda proven i'm resilient now.

dark matter.

"i do desire we may be better strangers"
                     -william shakespeare, as you like it



you're a stranger. you're always gonna be a stranger. maybe out of every label we stick on ourselves, a stranger is something that remains constant.

i don't know you. most people don't know you. sometimes you don't know yourself.
you're a stranger to someone. in lieu of waxing lyrical, you're also a stranger to the people of your past. who knows you? who will know you? will it stay constant?

i saw hundreds of people yesterday, i noticed the ones with earphones in. whenever i go somewhere, i tend to look for people that have earphones in; maybe i get a sense of solace seeing it, i never step out of the house with my earphones in.

i wondered what each of them were listening to, if they were even listening to anything at all.

each and everyone of you are what brought about a change of events (don't convince me determinism isn't real). you're no stranger to the universe, you're a stranger to what makes the universe up.

on the other hand, where did june go?

impetigo.

"even salt looks like sugar"
                                -narges obaid



i don't think there's anything more complicated than trust. it's relative, isn't it?

i had a conversation with someone i really care about today; i tried to say that even though i trust them, i'm scared to. it's confusing; i can't think about it clearly myself but it is what it is.

(hi there. you mean everything to me)

i think i assume a bit too much, i need to stop that. 

thank you davis.

"it's no use going back to yesterday, i was a different person then"
                                                               -lewis carroll


maybe i'm ripping off of john green here but there's something to be said about when you beg to be left alone and when you're finally left being, it turns out you're terrible company.

i don't really have to say anymore. unpack that yourself. 

kitchen counters.

"by convention sweet, by convention bitter"
                                           -democritus


i've written, erased, written, erased, written, erased over four times and i still can't quite find the words that pinpoint the emotion i'm feeling.

it's not bittersweet, more sweet than bitter. but bittersweet, nonetheless.
it's not indifference, it's closer to ambivalence.

it's a hollow victory.

i felt like it was only right to acknowledge this "occasion". i don't know if the person in context still sees this site or not but it doesn't matter. i'm saying this to the binary world of electronics where there's no emotion. no judgment, where there's nothing but zeroes and ones.
i'm talking to myself.

i want to write an open letter to the person in context, as if it would be my last words or something just as final as that to them. but i left it on a rather impersonal note therefore i won't change that and leave it impersonal. well, as impersonal as it can get, at least.

i didn't know how i'd feel once it struck midnight here. i don't feel all too bad, i feel the way i've been feeling ever since school closed. i'm feeling indisposed. averse. spent. whatever floats your boat.

honestly, i'm fairly certain i'm going to wake up later today and go about my daily routine. and that's only fitting. none of it ever affected my physical life even when everything went down. mentally? not much, i just became a lot less trusting. but i guess that was to come anyway.

my goodnights have become longer. before, it used to be just "goodnight, i love you"
now, i put effort into it.
its nice. more fulfilling.

things turned out for the best.

finite.

"from someone who doesn't want to share your destiny, you should neither accept a cigarette"
                                                                          -cesare pavese



1. appreciate.
2. keep distant.
3. they don't care. not about you. not about anything other than themselves.
4. write.
5. start.
6. shut up and suck it up.
7. seek.
8. don't chase after people. it's never worth it. you are your own person.
9. stop. wait a minute. then continue.
10. it will end eventually.


nothing is forever.

wood pulp.

"and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory"
                                           -jack london



i wish i wrote it down.

those thoughts that had the potential to become something big, those moments that burrow its way to the frontline of your subconscious, the little things you catch in your periphery that seem out of place but they're there. 

but i never do.

i bought a set of pens and a journal yesterday. i thought i'd use it religiously, trust it more than i trust my own gray matter but i woke up today not knowing why i should take time out of my nights to scribble in something that won't be remembered.

i guess that's something i struggle with; the fact that everything i do, or anyone does, will eventually be forgotten. we're all here documenting history,  filming miracles but what purpose does it serve in the long run when everything's dead and dying and the last chocolate bar has expired?

maybe i'll write in it eventually. or maybe not.
it might collect dust along with the fifty something odd diaries that are collecting dust in my cabinets right now.

i should look into recycling them.  

the dewey decimal system.

"i have measured out my life with coffee spoons"
                          -t.s eliot


living in doses.
i'm sick of doing that.

there's not much i want to say today. i felt like doing something so i'm doing this.
i feel like this spell of being vague is gonna last quite a while.

making tea is quite an ordeal.
of course, lately i've been opting for the lazy route with the teabags instead of going all the way to fourth base with tea leaves. you know what i mean.

we measure everything; measure how much water goes into a cup, measure how many spoons of honey are sweet enough, measure how many stacks of money make you rich enough, measure how much beauty is enough, we measure like there's nothing else we can do.

why is quantity a concept?

avalanche.

"i don't even know what i was running for- i guess i just felt like it"
                                                -j.d salinger



there are just those sublime moments when you realize you dont really need anyone.

what was i wasting all this time for, troubling myself over something i can't control? why should i be the one losing sleep when the person in context roams through our school corridors carefree and smiling? 

honestly, i just feel really vague.
it's not an emotion, i know, but sometimes i feel like that little snail trying to crawl on asphalt and that's not an emotion either.
anything can be anything. people should look into that concept with a lot more depth.

but as i was saying, time passes. just a few posts ago (in april) i was nearly broken over someone and two months later it's all better. maybe this time around it won't take that long (i'm hoping my heart cooperates).

i'm being vague.

i haven't been doing much lately. i've barely been looking up during class. i've barely been coming out of my room at home. i've barely been functional and it's a wonder how i've managed to show up at school every day for the past three weeks.

i'm meeting my new therapist for the first time in august. the appointment was supposed to be at the end of this month but i chickened out and postponed it. it's scary; having to open up to a new person, let alone an adult, after getting accustomed to your previous therapist after a while.

i guess these kinda things happen though.

i didn't really put a lot of effort into writing this. i haven't put a lot of effort into anything for a while; i've tried but i ended up in a worse state than before.

i'm being vague again.
i should work on that. 

worth.

"how dreary to be somebody!''
                                          -emily dickinson



during a lecture at our school, our principal said if everyone were to be happy with what you were doing, you're essentially doing nothing.

you're doing nothing for yourself.

there was a point where i felt as if one person not liking my decision was equivalent to it not being the right decision. even if was the right decision for me, it wasn't the right decision for them.
so it was never the right decision.

maybe it isn't as simple as that in some cases but i lost out on a lot of opportunities out of dilemmas born out of my inane need to please everybody. i'm scrapping that habit.

honestly? i'm kind of sick of having to tailor my opinions according to situations.
i wanna be my own person. 

philosophy.

"three o'clock has always been too late or too early for anything you want to do"
                                                                       -jean-paul sartre





my mind is buzzing.


sir sartre once said "my place is nowhere, i am unwanted"
two quotes in one post, i know, tacky
but bear with me.

in a story, "the letter", there is a phrase that drew my attention;cheerless existence.
it was in context to a man who had lived five years without a letter from his daughter.

i'm not at the age where i should be relating to this. nor have i had an experience but there's something about the juxtaposition of this entire damn situation that makes me wonder which decisions i had taken that led to me sitting here at 1:45pm questioning my essence. 

aristotle proposed the idea of essence; we exist for a final purpose. we may be awful at living up to our essence or we may be great at it. maybe we'll never figure out what our essence is but it's tied into our very being. it's not something we can deny.

you end up being the world's most terrifying criminal? there, that's your essence.
you end up being the next shakespeare? there you go.

but sartre (i've been reading about this guy for ages, he's a hoot) said existence precedes essence.
that essentially means everything's up to you.
literally.

it's easier said than done but we were presented with a horrifying amount of freedom the moment we came into existence. you're choosing your every step.
this fact led some existentialists to senility but some reveled in it.

i'm getting to the point.
while my literature teacher waxed lyrical about the use of the phrase "cheerless existence" i got to thinking if there really was someone out there existing without an inkling of happiness, how can they stay alive?

by aristotle's point of view, living without happiness would equate to being your essence.
by sartre's point of view, living without happiness would equate to the culmination of every glance, every decision, every step, breath, wink, tear of your life.

is all of this really our fault?
is the world dying our fault?
the people getting assaulted everyday, trump getting elected, the children starving in the corners of the world, the homeless people, the poverty stricken population; is this what the world was meant to come to or is this because of us?

are we to blame?

racquets.

"summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well"
                                                        -george r.r. martin



on the way back home, i overheard a conversation between two primary schoolers. one of them was asking if the other person was free this evening so they could play. a conversation of thorough disarray ensued; they finally decided to settle who was coming to whose house over text.

i remembered when i was in primary, i used to get anxious throughout the day to come back home just so my friends and i could meet up and we'd put our imagination to good use for an hour and a half.
somewhere along the way, school got too much and we holed ourselves up in our room desperately scribbling away at papers. there wasn't any time for imagination. in a way, i guess there still isn't.

i miss being seven years old.
i miss not knowing what social media was, what relationships were, what love feels like.
i miss when the only thing that could make me sad was when one of my friends couldn't come over to play.

some of them still live around the street. my oldest friend moved away in 8th grade. ever since then, i've drifted apart from them.

i feel like things went too fast.
it's too late to slow them down. 

purple rain.

"when you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?"
                                       -jennifer niven



if there's one thing that the past week has taught me, its how to be happy for other people.
i'm a bitter person, it's not a secret. as a 7 year old, hearing about my aunt's trips to all these exotic places that i had never heard of made my eyes prick with tears because why can't i go too? 

even now, i'm slightly more traveled, slightly more well-read, i still can't say im true to myself when i watch my friends walk up on stage to receive an award that i was vying for.

but there's this person i met.
let's call them alex. alex is, by far, the most considerate person i've ever had the pleasure of meeting.
the day they brought a glass of coke back for me from the canteen when they had gone to get one for themselves is something i'll never forget.
you rarely find nice people around here.
alex is one of the rare people.

while them and the rest of our team sat in a row, looking up at the stage with dimmed hope, they said something kind of profound that blew me away.
they said, even if you don't win anything, clap for the people that did.

now none of that was new to me, my parents had been telling me that, my teachers had been telling me that, almost everyone had told me that at some point or the other.
but the way they said it made me believe it.

suffice it to say, i wasn't sad that day. i came back feeling mildly buzzed owing to the fact that one of the biggest tensions of the month had finally gotten over and somewhere along the journey of getting through that tension, i met a friend i don't want to lose.

it's a privilege that's looked over by so many people, i guess; meeting people that change you. i met someone who taught me a lesson i had been trying to grasp ever since i was ten.
and even though there's a 90% chance  alex and i will drift apart in the coming month, they're not someone i can forget.

maybe the fact that eventually all our problems are gonna seem so trivial escape me sometimes. i don't need to spend so many nights awake anxious about the fact that i may never meet someone who truly admires me for who i am. nor is there a need to disregard the sick part of my brain to make room for the parts that still work.

i don't need to feel as if i can't be true to others, and in extension be true to myself.
positivity (positiveness?) is not something that comes as easily to you when your brain physically refuses to make you feel so. but there's something to be said about the fact that it isn't an excuse to slack for months on end.

i need to get my life together.
it's time to stop being bitter.

flights.

"no dark sarcasm in the classroom"
                                                 -roger waters, pink floyd





what a long, long, long week.
but oh, what a wonderful one.


i made new friends.
had new experiences.
learnt new things.
i traveled alone for the first time, i drove around my native city with a few of my friends and saw places i had never seen before.
i saw the cap and the belt of one of the greatest freedom fighters of my country.
i saw a few of his handwritten letters.

i haven't slept in what seems like a century (this is, in fact, a lyric by shinedown). everybody who had come on the trip with me went to school today. i didn't.

i haven't written in ages. nor have i drawn. however, to bolster that little creative voice in me i bought a journal as a sort of solace, i guess.

i met one of the best people i have ever had the pleasure of knowing. it's left me with this warm buzz within myself; the fact that the first new friend i made in 2018 is such a pleasant person is strangely comforting.

everybody hates a tourist (this happens to be a lyric in common people). surprisingly, all of us fit right within the people back in that city. being my hometown, it was nice seeing what it's like there in may and not my summer vacation months. for the others, it was their first time seeing the city. i felt a tiny sense of pride when they said it was beautiful.

im back home now.
one thing i'm scared about is that all ten of us will drift apart but im hoping that for once, we're granted with something good.

when you find people like them, you never let them go. 

nor the gilded monuments.

"turn up the lights, i don't want to go home in the dark"
                                                                              -o. henry



time is not going to be loyal to your statues.


they're going to collect dust; everything you've worked for will collect dust.
nobody's going to remember it.

i want people to remember it.
i want you to remember me. 

polyamory.

"therefore i lie with her and she with me
and in our faults by lies we flattered be"
                                                            -william shakespeare, sonnet 138



sometimes i wonder what it'd be like if i had kept it hidden.
would either of them be satisfied or would they be at each others throats?

i am here now. i have done what i have done.
the ball's out of my court for the last time. 

veins.

"there are a lot of things i wish i would have done, instead of sitting around and complaining about having a boring life"
                           -kurt cobain




yesterday a friend of mine broke down in front of me on the stairs in my school. the staircase was opposite the basketball ground and there were giant fourteen year olds screaming bloody murder when they couldn't shoot a hoop.

her eyes turned red and watery and before i knew it, she was sobbing with her sleeves furiously rubbing at her face while i was stood there wondering what to do. her parents aren't very good people, she said. they aren't going to pay for her college, they don't care about what she does once she finishes 12th grade. i don't want to mention the rest.

day before that, another friend of mine came to me sniffling about about how much stress she was under. granted, there were quite a few people that day who were close to tears because of the amount of work we got that day but she was all trembling hands and shaky knees. it broke my heart.

i came back home and kind of had a slump myself.
and i couldn't bring myself to go to school today.

the fact that they trust me enough to cry in front of me is really touching but the fact that i'm still stuck wanting to rip my skin off half the time and still not speak out hurts. it doesn't hurt anyone else, it just hurts me.

i'm going to take a nap.
being awake doesn't seem appealing right now.

closure.

"you will always be fond of me. i represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit"
                                                          -oscar wilde; the picture of dorian gray



i'm one step closer.

after all this time, i'm one tiny step closer.

and i haven't felt this free in so long, i guess i really had to let you go to reach out to all the people i've reached out to. there's no spite left, no malice. just pity.

i'm glad.

i'm glad you're gone.

enemy.

"they don't like you, they don't bring you coffee. they knife you in the back instead"
                                                                                               
                                                                                                                -lee child




p.e; a friend of mine overheard two girls whispering about my recent haircut. one of them said i did it to impress someone.

homeroom; a girl came up to me in the bus and told me she wanted to look like me.

i didn't know what to say both times. i kept quiet.

i probably greet everything with derision, i've figured that out now.
how do i fix it?

heat of the moment.

"rage was sometimes a useful ally in the heat of a fight, but it was a trickster.
it made everything seem possible"
                                                       -jonathan maberry, dust and decay





it's ironic how pure sadness makes your fingertips go numb and unadulterated rage makes your fingertips simmer.

i'm kind of stuck in a limbo between the two, and i can't say that they cancel each other out. if anything, they multiply in exponents and make your knees go weak. i'm not trying to get lyrical, that's quite literally the case.

i woke up at 10am after drifting off to sleep at 7am. i didn't try moving until half hour later, after i had closed my eyes and calmed myself the best i could. i was all wobbly legs and scorching palms and it's taking everything in me not to let out my anger the way i used to.

 playing the victim when you're at fault is just sick. not being able to genuinely own up to something- thinking an empty apology is enough- that's sick. guilt tripping someone and killing every bit of good they had in themselves is the sickest thing anyone can do.

but at least now i know what happened with everyone else. now, after so long, i can see their point of view.

but let me tell you, the grass really is greener on the other side.
and i'm not ever coming back.

graphite.

''nostalgia is a seductive liar"
                                       -george ball





there's something about the way nostalgia creeps up on you at the weirdest times in the weirdest places.
i was standing in front of the art room in my school yesterday and i realized i hadn't been there in months. i hadn't picked up a pencil and drawn something for myself in months.
nor had i attempted to sketch out something simple; not an eye, not a hand, not even a quirk of someone's lips.

then i remembered summer of 2011, the year i ruined my table by splattering paint on it.  i remember getting my first sketchbook- a small, simple one. it didn't even have a cover, it was just a couple of pages bound together with glue and cardboard. i remember finding a box of 6 fabric paints and using them until they dried up.


nostalgia is bittersweet.

guitar riffs.

"to avoid criticism,
say nothing
do nothing
be nothing''
                 -elbert hubbard





reflecting on the past few years, maybe i've arrived at this realization too late but the sole reason everything happened the way it did is because i wanted to be myself.
not to sound edgy or anything, but the fact that they had called me satanic over my music choices seems pretty laughable now but back then as a barely corrupt 11 year old, it was like everything i had ever built for myself came crumbling down.

of course, i wish that was the end of it.

things happened as i came closer to figuring out who i wanted to be. most of them weren't necessarily good but there were a few instances here and there that propelled me just a little bit forward.
i guess im grateful for that.

but now, i've been in the same class as them for two years. it hasn't gotten to me as much as i thought it would. thing is, even though i had drifted off to a fitful sleep the first few months after screaming the energy out of myself, it's slightly better now.

i barely notice them. i can look up, look past them, look at the teacher and pay attention. i'm not shit scared about having to face them everyday. i doubt that slight dread that settles at the bottom of my stomach won't leave until i've completely restarted everything but at least, it's better.


maybe it's because i'm nothing.

theorems.

"from an inconsistent equation, you can prove whatever you want to''
                                                                            -my deeply philosophical math teacher







i'm writing this while lexapro is taking its effect on me but hey, strike while the iron's hot.

so in class we proved what an inconsistent equation really is because apparently, 2 is not equal to 1 and our math reader deemed it necessary to inform us of that. it was a good half an hour of scribbling words onto my palms.

things don't work out the way you want them to. sometimes there's a 2 on the left side of the equality and a 1 on the other. sometimes a quadratic polynomial comes into the picture and you're left trying to push all the square roots on one side and finding a common factor within the rest of the terms.

sometimes there is no common factor.
sometimes the square roots prevent that.
sometimes all that you get on the other side of the equality is irrational and there's nothing you can do about that.

irrationality can't be prevented.
not when it comes to the coldest, hardest facts in the world; numbers.

im not sure what happened with us. maybe i was the pesky non-perfect square and you were that mysterious variable that is needed to be solved in order to make sense of the entire system. maybe two unequal terms were on opposite sides.
maybe the other side was irrational.

maybe we were an inconsistent equation. 

platonic.

"you only understand the value of love when it comes in wallets"
                                                                                                   -my economics teacher





i did something terrible. i don't know how to reverse it though.
but i don't regret it. maybe i regret enough to know it's wrong but not so much that i want to stop it.
thing is, something this simple hasn't made me this happy in a year. i'm not gonna take that away for myself.


guilt is my least favorite feeling. i feel ashamed for things i shouldn't be ashamed for. for things i feel guilty for, i usually abandon it after a while.
but this thing in particular?
i don't think so.

i sound like a blubbering mess, i feel like a blubbering mess. i've been coughing so hard it's like my throat has been shredded to a million pieces. i've had friends yell at me for things i actually wanted.
but i've been drinking 3 liters of water per day so that's a plus.

i'm gonna stay home tomorrow so i have time to re-evaluate exactly what i'm doing.
i'm kind of lost right now
but i guess the only kind of guidance that will really help is gonna be from myself.













note; 10.11.18; it's white eyelash. but it turns out fine. 

orator.

''that is life; to begin again when everything is lost''   
                                                                                      a.j. cronin





i came upon that quote while researching for a ppt- which i have to present tomorrow and i still haven't memorized the material i'm supposed to present, instead i'm writing an inconsequential blogpost that won't do anything but bolster the pretentious side of me and trick me into thinking i'm actually quite deep and philosophical when i'm really not.
all i am is miserable.

and i know that but i still can't do anything to turn that around.

i've been doing things that are supposed to make me happier these past few days. i said something to people that i've been wanting to say for around five years now. i cleared things with some other people that needed to be cleared.
i guess i'm getting closer to 'living my own truth', even though i'm still not clear on that concept.

tables and chairs.

"the opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity''
                                                                                                                   -rollo may





i was watching a video about 'living your truth' a few days ago and i've been thinking about it a lot.
if i ever want to be content, living my truth seems like a pretty important step.

the only thing is, i'm pretty much a coward when it comes to self-expression. i have absolutely none.
i want to believe it's just because i'm a teen but it seems as if everyone else is comfortable in their own skin. they walk around freely while i think twice before making a single move. their personalities are blaring while i barely even have one.

i didn't understand what living your truth meant at first and i probably still don't understand it.
but i know i need to stop hiding so many things about me.
im not brave enough for it yet but maybe in a few years.

premonition.

"as long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? you can't stop living."
                                                                   -truman capote





you know how in voting there's a 'none of the above' option. i wish there was something like that when it came to doing things.

10th grade starts tomorrow.
am i scared? maybe.
will i stay up late worrying? possibly.

homeschooling would be a valid option if my education system supported it. i guess it doesn't or i'd have done that ages ago. i probably have to face this year as well, just like i've been doing all this while.

gets tiring sometimes.

its been four bad years and this year is important.
lets hope this unlucky spell ends this year.

the shallow side.

"i don't fear death so much as i fear its prologues''
                                                                              -mary roach



yesterday i was asked about my deepest fear and i hit a wall. i deflected the question but it's been bothering me for a while.

to be fair, death never was a fear of mine.
my fear is pretty mundane.

i sleep with a switched on table lamp covered with two towels. i close the door so i don't have to see the masks decorated outside the room. i keep my blanket bunched up over my head so i don't have to see the two large mirrors and two other masks in the room.

at least i'm replacing one mirror.

it isn't my deepest fear though. episodes of horror shows where a demon hides within a mirror are burnt into the back of my mind but it still doesn't make my fingertips go numb.

the thought that i won't ever be content probably does.
happy? maybe.
but being content is something not many people are.

pickets.

''gravity differs from affection.

only one is constant.''

they say if you find a source of gravity large enough, it bends space and time. 

or so, time travel becomes possible. 

i want the past back; to be able to go places, see people, exist in itself, without wondering what happens next. 

i don't know if this can stay, i don't know if i will. 

but i can no more alter time than i can alter gravity.