ice.

sometimes i slip into these moments of peace, and they are always so simple, so mundane that i'm surprised i spend so much of my time moping. today, i poured cold orange juice into a misshapen glass. i added four cubes of ice for fair measure, and everything aligned for a second. it's humid and heavy outside but its okay, at least i have cold juice, it will be okay.

a frisson of shame.

i’m ashamed of saying things. i’m ashamed of every word that comes out of my mouth sometimes. i don’t feel this way a lot, but when i do i rethink everything i say twice, thrice, maybe more, and nine times out of ten i decide not to say it. 

i can see my reflection on my phone and i’m ashamed of what i see. i imagine a voice yelling at me, saying i don’t have to be, but the more i look at my reflection, the more i think i do. 

every word feels wrong sometimes. i have a bad habit of trying to predict the first automatic thoughts in people’s heads in reaction to something i’ve said, and my first thought is annoyance. they’re clicking their tongue at me and thinking, “what the hell? she’s so frustrating” 

i know that is wrong, and even if someone does react that way it is none of my business. but when i feel like this, i can’t swim my way out of it. it becomes my business and not theirs. its my business to not annoy them, whoever they are. 

during moments like this, i involuntarily imagine everyone close to me seeing something i’ve said and their instant response is to be tired of it. it scares me so much that i end up trying to say less, close to nothing of substance. nothing reactionary. i feel ashamed for being ashamed, because it’s not sad anymore. it’s frustrating. it’s a bad feeling that refuses to leave no matter what i do or say, or no matter what others do or say. 

i’ve been noticing, more and more, how i veer away from loud noises, or how i try to stay as silent as i can at all times. even if no one’s home, i only watch or listen to things with headphones in. if i play things out loud, i feel deeply uncomfortable. i keep the volume low, even with my headphones connected. i try increasing it sometimes but i invariably put it back down again. 

but i still like loud things. i like noise. i like when you walk into a crowded room and you can barely hear yourself think because chatter seems to be filling up all the space between people. 

and i like loud people. i like people who talk and and talk and talk, who won’t let a second of quiet settle. it sounds smothering, but i like being smothered perhaps. 

maybe my issue is with the sound i, myself, produce. i don’t talk out loud all that frequently. it comes down to the little things too; i will always set a cup down with my pinky finger first, to avoid the clatter of glass against a surface. i will close doors as slowly as possible (but sometimes they creak and then i cringe all the way through). where i’m living for the next month, the bathroom door does a loud bang when you open it and then again when you shut it. i have to do it with force or the latch doesn’t stick. vacuuming is the worst part of the day, always. 

it’s something i need to get over, except i don’t know why this is a habit in the first place. i was never reprimanded for making too much noise. i was never quieted when i talked. but i do it myself. i reprimand myself. i quiet myself. 

couple this with feeling so much shame for simply thinking sometimes, and it’s suffocating. it’s suffocating. i can’t find a fix for it except forcing through all of it, which i must do whether i want to or not. 

but i think i just wanted to complain. while writing these posts i’m never sure if i’ll end up uploading them or not. for this one, i’m even less sure. there are multiple drafts floating around unposted- too pretentious, too whiny, too this, too that. but it’s all the same thing, i’m ashamed of all of this. i’m ashamed of saying things. i’m ashamed of every word that comes out of my mouth sometimes.

thermostat.

(from 16/2/22)

i don’t know what i’m doing. i don’t know why im writing this, or if i even want to write it at all. but i am writing it nonetheless even if the reasons are unknown to me. i’ve been drawing everyday for the last four days. i don’t know if it’s a habit i can stick to for more than a week- today’s sketch turned out terribly and just a while ago i tore out the page in frustration. last night i tried to draw again but nothing i did was working out, nothing looked like how i wanted it to; there was a mismatch between my head and hands and now the page is flimsy from erasing over and over. 

today was bad from the second i woke up. i don’t know why that happens, but it happens nonetheless even if the reasons are unknown to me. it’s kind of stupid trying to talk about it to someone- “oh yeah i opened my eyes and instantly felt my heart drop. dunno why! just did”

it sounds like something out of an 11 year old's diary. but it happened today. it didn’t necessarily start out badly. i had pancakes for breakfast which were really nice. i did draw despite not liking it in the end, but i did something good for myself, or at least i tried to. it was a normal day by all accounts. i took an unintended long nap, i watched a show i like, i showered even. i did everything that would usually suffice to leave me satisfied at the end of the day, but it didn’t change a thing today. 

i felt so heavy, my brain felt like it was stuffed with cotton, i was thinking slower than usual and had a little trouble trying to form the next thought as well. there are a lot of feelings i do my best to stave away, simply because i never want to be that sort of person- contempt, anger, resentment. but i felt the unfurlings of bitterness today. if all it takes for me to be satisfied is a painless day, both emotionally and physically, and just one happy conversation, why has it felt like i'm asking for too much? i feel like i am, though i know i shouldn't be. i felt so disappointed, so sad, just resigned and i hate that feeling. dinner was nice too. i didn’t even get nauseous after eating today which is a solid win. 

someone i love said a while ago that when i get moody, i tend to ignore questions and i take everything really personally. they are the only person i allow myself to talk to on the worse days, so i know they're right and i don’t disagree. for the questions part it’s because of that heavy brainfog. sentences always get stuck in my head and i have to spend a couple minutes trying to figure out how to answer how my day was. not because i need time to figure out how to not betray the way im feeling but because i genuinely never know how to describe things on days like this. 

and i do take everything personally. i do that usually as well sadly but usually i’m also clear headed enough to get myself out of that zone quickly. but i can’t do that now. it sucks to say but it takes a lot of brain power to regulate bad feelings like that. i can do it normally but i can’t now. and so, i end up acting irrationally. and i do realize how irrational i’m being- i just can’t control it. or maybe i can and i’m just trying to wrongly justify myself. 

it gets in my way a lot. i can’t do a lot of things because i’m sadly unconsciously always terrified i’m going to get laughed at. i don’t crack jokes because in the event it doesn’t land well, i will feel so so embarrassed even if it isnt a big deal. i don’t know how to be playful, because i don’t know if what i’m saying is playfully mean or really actually mean. because i never know if i should take what the other person is saying as playful or with seriousness - and i don’t want to make someone feel any hurt from something i’ve said. i’m always looking at things people say absolutely seriously and i realize that’s just not great for interaction. no one likes someone who can’t be funny, who they can’t joke around with, who they can’t poke harmless fun at from time to time. 

i’m a boring and frustrating person, i don’t really mean that fully derogatorily but it’s not something i’m okay with either. it never used to be a massive insecurity of mine, i knew i wasn't a fun person and i accepted it, but it's all i think about now- if i can fix it. if it's natural, then i'm always going to remain this way and the thought that i might never stop feeling such abject shame about myself terrifies me. lately, i've had the feeling i'm very close to driving away everyone i hold close because of this. there is no reassurance- simply because i can't trust it. i don’t want to be boring, i want to be able to laugh at myself sometimes, i want to keep up with people when they’re joking around instead of getting confused and then discouraged from talking. but i don’t know where to start. 

my terror of being laughed at overshadows my desire to be playful and i have no idea how to reverse that yet. maybe someday but i’m still confused as of now.

i’m just really tired. i feel like i’ve been stuck in this state for months and months, as i've mentioned before, and i can’t see it ending anytime soon. 

but i want to fall asleep feeling simply good one day. that’s all i want. to sleep feeling good. 

morning dove.

 i used to be able to hear birds flapping around outside my window at dawn. sometimes i’d stay awake to listen to them coo and flap and let them have their party, before i inevitably had to chase them away after a few minutes for the sake of my mother’s plants. one year she suggested barbed wires along the balcony railing. i said no. i felt bad for the birds back home; there were very few places with shade and leaves, close to no refuge under 50°c sun, and our balcony seemed to be a popular hangout during the summer months. but the leaves used to shrivel under the heat every year (they came back to life soon enough. the lemon tree went strong for 15 years) and the birds only came back at dawn, when it was cooler, to coo and flap and have their party. 

outside the window in our living room, facing another building, there was a ledge that a big, fat pigeon had occupied. it was its territory. it’d fly to and from the other building, resting at the ledge and chasing away any other birds that dared to sit on it. he was a bully. maybe he didn’t like the other birds, maybe none of them liked him. but once in a while, there used to be a smaller pigeon that would pass by. she’d perch herself on top of the ledge and wait for a while every couple afternoons, and the big mean pigeon used to sit right next to her. my dad and i would watch them at times. the smaller pigeon was never shooed away. she had the singular honor of sitting on his ledge, right next to him, pecking away at her own feathers without so much as a coo from the other one. i liked to imagine they were dating, the scary guy with the unassuming girlfriend who maybe happens to be scarier. a little love story right on our ledge. 

once a year, and only once, we used to be visited by a specific sparrow. i didn’t see sparrows a lot back home so i was always excited to see one hidden away in the branches of the trees outside my window. i started to recognize it after a couple years. it was uncanny. but we used to look at its visit as an indication of spring turning to summer. each year, whenever it came it used to hang around for an hour or two. nothing would scare it away. i used to take a little bowl of water out for it then, as quietly as i could, and then go back inside, just as quietly. sometimes it would drink from it, other times it wouldn't. but it’d come every year. this year it came a little early. in mid-january, when it was still deep winter (or as deep as it could get back home) 

i didn’t think it was the same sparrow at first. i kept staring at it for a while and then looked at the multiple pictures i had of it from the previous years and soon realized it in fact, was the same bird, and it was a couple months too early for it to be turning from spring to summer. 

i didn’t question it so much at the time, but i went and brought out its little bowl of water either way and watched it back inside from my window. it left after an hour and i had taken a bunch of photos of it again. i realized then that would be the last time i'd perform this little ritual, the last time i’d be visited by this sparrow. just as romantically, i imagined the sparrow knew somehow we were leaving so it had come to say goodbye, even though it was months ahead of its schedule.  

i think romantically about a lot of things. i like thinking these commonplace occurrences have a significance to them that are bigger than what they actually are. i don’t hear any birds outside my window now. i said i was looking forward to crows cawing me awake but as it seems, crows don’t go so far out the city. the pigeons aren’t as loud here, and the only creatures keeping me company are creepy crawlies and the occasional lizard i see climbing up the outside wall (presumably on its way to catch a creepy crawly itself) 

it’s been over a month, nearly two, and i'm beginning to feel like a broken record. i wonder if i’ll ever find a bird that comes to visit every year again, wherever i end up going. i doubt it but i also doubt anyone stops wanting to recreate the childhood rituals they had, no matter how farther you get from it.