seventeen-reverse.

"a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger"
                                    -stephen king, skeleton crew

when i was nine i didnt have a laptop of my own. understandable.
on friday afternoons, i'd sit at the head of the table where my dad's laptop is and spend a few hours on microsoft word writing god knows what. back then, i didnt know what bad writing was. everything i wrote was amazing and i honestly thought i'd get published at the age of ten and beat the guinness world record for youngest writer.

cut back to now, i spent this evening staring at my laptop wondering if i should give writing a shot again. i miss it. i miss coming up with concepts and managing to put it down on a document while sounding coherent. there's something so incredibly scary about actually writing a story; not just foreign snippets.

i remember coming up with a fantasy story. a girl finds herself in a world where creatures are controlled by some almighty mountain dweller that feeds on crystals. and if thats not weird enough, the creatures are some kind of gnome-dwarf hybrids. her quest was to travel to the mountain and beg the mountain creature for forgiveness for trespassing onto his world. upon getting his forgiveness, a wormhole would open up at the foot of the mountain which would bring her back to wherever she came from.

honesty, it sounds like a fun story. but as a nine year old i had no clue what wormholes were and what hybrids were (thanks ao3). so even if i cant really remember what exactly i had written. i bet it wasn't very good. that's not the point though. i didn't think it was bad while i was writing it. i thought it was the best story ever. pulitzer-worthy.

those were good days, i was the self proclaimed ruler of the world. i didn't know negativity. especially when self-aimed negativity. but right now, it's a perpetual wii swordplay showdown at midnight and those three-heart players seem to be coming at me with a vengeance.

exam season.

"finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind"
 -miguel de cervantes saavedra, don quixote


my charger is bust open right where the wire meets the charger that connects to the phone. on either sides of it are helpless strips of electric tape. its pretty much how i'm feeling. what a stupid comparison.

i pretty much have the next two weeks off from school in the name of study leave. its only the end of day one and im already delirious. either im in bed wasting away or im sitting in front of my desk, staring at my notes somehow hoping all of the information just transfers into my memory (osmosis?)

remember that one episode of doraemon where he ate bread slices with the answers of his homework on it so he could remember all of it? that's for a niche audience but i cant think of a more relatable thing at the moment.

anyway, thats how im doing.

listen to chase atlantic's latest ep.

seventy seven.

"i feel half faded away like some figure in the background of an old picture"
                         -iris murdoch, a severed head



interest is a funny thing. it seems to drop when the outcome gives you a lot less satisfaction than you wanted. i talked to someone about it a few days back and they said the satisfaction didn't affect their interest in a particular thing. i kinda wish i had that quality.

i would kill for effortless intelligence. sometimes there seems to be no solid output to all of the effort i've seemingly put in and it's almost like karma is shaking you by the collar asking for spare change.
this has happened before; being less than the best. and i've dealt with it, i think i have.

but a lot more is riding on a satisfactory outcome nowadays than before. that's the pattern, i guess. the higher up you go in a system, the more weight your actions hold. 

i'll come back to this post exactly two months from now. i'm hoping i'll be happy with the results ive gotten over that time and if i'm not, i hope future me knows it'll work out, it always has. 

feeling bitter.

"and that the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that i may lose what i have now, and not find anything except loneliness"
              -sylvia plath, the unabridged journals of sylvia plath


there's a theme winding itself into everything i'm feeling nowadays. it's something i don't really feel all that often so when it comes to dealing with it, i'm at a complete loss. when i'm finding myself with nothing to do except look straight ahead, this wave of fear hits me. every time. for the past hour, i've been lying down and concentrating on the little specks of dust that found their way onto the ac vent and thinking about everything that's gonna happen over the next six months.

i'm feeling all types of things. i know somewhere deep down there's some kind of excitement at the prospect of the unknown but when i don't wanna dig down too deep, it's just layers and layers of apprehension and uncertainty. i don't wanna come up with some pretentious metaphor so i sound like some pretentious literary arts kid but pushing all things aside, i'm so so scared.

i'm leaving the school i've known for the past twelve years. i'm leaving many of my friends behind. as for the friends that are moving schools with me, i'm not even sure if they're gonna go through with it. someone i know has already chickened out. i'm leaving behind the reputation i've made for myself at school with the teachers, the students, the management. the fact that two months from now, i'm gonna be walking into a new place with classrooms of fifty people and not knowing anyone strikes pure terror in me.

it's not just that i guess. i've been preparing myself for this moment for the last three years so i'm not as bad as i thought i would be. but there's this persistent loneliness just gnawing away at me, and god, the last thing i want is to sound pretentious but feeling all of your friends drift away from you ruins you. i genuinely don't think i have a friend to go to anymore. everyone i used to be close to has become close to each other and all of a sudden, it's like i'm not part of it anymore. it's like stitching something that ends up not fitting you at the end. that was a bad analogy but it gets the point across.

i miss having a proper close friend. a friend i can turn to, online or in real life, without feeling a single doubt. i had that. i lost it, school came in and took me away, leaving me neck deep in stress and without time to reconnect. having to justify yourself for disappearing days at a time to your friends when you finally get some time to reach out gets tiring after a while. it leaves you wondering if it's even worth keeping in touch when you're gone 50% of the time. why hang onto someone who probably doesn't really wait for you to come back, right? 

i have a partner, and i am so grateful for that. i wouldn't trade it for anything; only thing keeping me going. 
but what's life without friendship?

a glimpse.

"and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music"
                      -friedrich nietzche


the high point of pure tension is dancing to the 1975's 'be my mistake' in the bathroom, with a foamy toothbrush in one hand and the world in the other. 

1,2,3 action!

"i don't know anymore. i don't know, i don't know, god, i'm so tired"
              -francesca zappla, eliza and her monsters.



here's the deal; i'm the biggest drama queen i know. i will kick up a fuss for the smallest things if it causes me any inconvenience and despite being reminded of this trait of mine for years on end, i have not taken a single step towards changing it.

do i wanna change it though? maybe not. there's a lot of things i wouldn't have gotten if i hadn't thrown a tiny little temper tantrum here and there. but after the hundreds of hours spent sulking, there's one thing for which my displeasure is totally justified.

i don't like school. i have never liked it. the education part is fine but for the past two years, there's been no education; it's just a slurry of information that i will not need. my third round of exams start on tuesday. on that day, i have my science exam. the rational side of me wants to study every second of everyday but the drama queen in me is sitting in her plush recliner waving her hands in dismissal announcing "who needs that? you have skills!''

and who am i to disobey a queen?

one eighty three.

"ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation"
                                               -kahlil gibran



the quoted poet possibly has some of the most pretentious poetry ive read and ive read a lot of it. and the fact that i'm calling something pretentious must mean something but the quote is relevant so its fine.

but that's not why i'm here. i'm only on here when something's on my mind. i didn't mean to write anything tonight but a friend dropped by, said a little goodbye and left. i'm not gonna be able to talk to her for a while so it stings a little.

i didn't really realize how much she meant to me until she told me she's leaving. i fail to realize the kind of force people play in my life. i can say that i withdraw myself as much as i want but i spend way too much time talking to people even if it's not face-to-face. when they leave, i feel it the way i wouldn't feel it if i truly did withdraw myself from people the way i say i do. this doesn't have a point to it, i needed to put it in words though.

in the afternoon i was thinking of ditching social media like i've seen some of my friends do this year. i'm considering going through with it. if anything, at least i won't give this blog (i honestly don't know if i can call this a blog) up. when i'm long gone, i'm hoping this corner of the net will stay preserved. 

dawning.

"a person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended"
                                    -ian mcewan, atonement



the timestamp for the last two posts have probably been a little weirder than the others. i can explain this one; i thought pulling an all nighter was a good idea. i'd reset my sleeping schedule and i'd have extra time to prepare for my preboards, killing two birds with one stone. (feeding two birds with one scone @ peta are you happy)

even though i powered through my 4am slump, i can feel the 6am slump heavy on my eyelids, weighing my shoulders down and she's not taking no for an answer. it'd defeat the whole purpose though, if i fell asleep now.

anyway, lately i've been thinking about stress. who said lust is one of the lords of life? stress has me chained to my desk with a grip on my nose bending me down to books i do not want to read. the next four months are arguably the most important in my school life but it's not sinking in. the fact that it's here and it's no longer a dreadful time teachers and parents would warn us about has still not cemented in my reality and that's resulted in tonight; what i thought would be a productive few hours but instead turned out to be a burden on my tailbone and a strain on my eyelids. i forgot to switch night mode on.

i've been averaging eight hours a week on social media and that's inversely proportional to the amount of time i've spent studying as well. maybe it looks like i've been working but i've really not, i know i've not. if i had, i wouldn't have been awake now. winter break was fairly uneventful as well which left me with my hands empty, save for the guilt of procrastination i've had to lug around with me for the past week. i wish i could say i'm normally not like this but i am. case in point; i only wrote two blogposts in december 2018 because i couldn't force myself to spend fifteen minutes in writing a few sentences.

i don't know what i'm trying to say, all i know is what i'm feeling. and nothing about it is particularly pleasant.

i hope this serves as a reminder, a warning. a gentle push- whatever you want it to be- towards accomplishing something you want/need to. unless you wanna live in a perpetual state of fear (i don't recommend it) you should probably focus on your work as soon as the task exists.

new year, new you right?