Thursday 7 July 2016

For Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Dontre Hamilton, John Crawford III, Eric Garner, Michael Brown Jr, Ezell Ford, Tanisha Anderson, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Kimani Gray, Jerame Reid, Freddie Gray, et al.

(Here, a comprehensive list of the people killed by police in America in 2016. This is for those with the 'B' under the race column.)

-

Here is the headline - a new name, a similar face, the same body
                 black, bleeding, butchered
on the pavement.

You have my brother's smile, my father's eyes, my uncle's nose.

You look like me.

Yesterday you were someone's husband
                 and I know that when she sees you again in that black suit, her grief will split her down the middle because this is not how it was supposed to go
someone's father, someone's brother, someone's son, someone's friend.
Today, you are a hashtag.

And, my God bear witness, do I know anger. I feel rage. I grieve. I am drowning in sorrow.

You, my brothers, my sisters, your blood is staining the ground and they will feed me the thug narrative,
They will tell me you were a bad person,
That you had a gun/wore a hoodie/resisted arrest/were black.
You were guilty.
Your only crime the skin you were born in.

Tell me, America, does blood come out in the wash?
Can you dance on the tombstones and forget that is a graveyard?

We built your country, with all your luxuries, with our blood,
Our spines bent as we toiled.
We paid the price with our lives and still you show us our debt.

(The eight stages of genocide are classification, symbolisation, dehumanisation, organisation, polarisation, preparation, extermination and denial, in case you wondered if this sounded sorta familiar.)
And all we can taste is blood.
Soon we will hunger and thirst for it.


Negroes,
Sweet and docile,
Meek, humble and kind:
Beware the day
They change their mind!
Wind
In the cotton fields,
Gentle Breeze:
Beware the hour
It uproots trees!
-Langston Hughes

Saturday 23 April 2016

I fucks with black momma spirit magic real heavy.

I'm having a bad anxiety episode. I can't sleep, I've consumed a lot of caffeine to compensate and I'm suffering from abnormally horrid symptoms. The suffering tonight is that instead of sleep Im experiencing a semi-consciousness like sleep, except nothing at all like sleep, where I just lay in the dark scratching all my exposed skin until it stings and bleeds without realising. 

And then of course, I roll over and realise how much of my own skin is under my nails and my stomach lurches like I've almost crashed into a truck and I have to smush my face into a pillow because there's blood and skin under my nails and everything stings like pepper. 

Except then I hear my phone buzz and it is my mother: "Mani my spirit uneasy. Tell me you're okay"

Like I said, I fucks with black momma spirit magic heavy. You can't convince me that this isn't supm unreal. 

Saturday 16 April 2016

On the friendzone, AGAIN.

For the second time on this blog, I'm ranting about the "friendzone". The mythical friendzone that stems from the ignorant and entitled belief that my friendship is some consolation prize to my FRIENDS for my pussy. 

Why is it that after a certain period of time, and a certain depth of friendship, suddenly some people become dissatisfied with the friendship that they've been content with for years. For like thirteen years. Roughly. Through hide and seek and finger painting, through arguments in parking lots when you helped my friends ruin their relationships (because you knew and she knew that she had a boyfriend, but also very funny story because shortly after that he became my boyfriend too.... ahh, Mandeville. You'd have to live here to get it....) and through long distance military best friend letters to and from Germany, Amsterdam and the States. 

And now you're trying to convince me that you wanna wife me. And lay pipe in me. 

Like I'm not allowed to be twenty with friendships outside of the realm in which men want to date me and fuck me. Why is my life a series of Venn Diagrams where all the men in my life who aren't related to me must fall into subsets of the men who value me either romantically or sexually?  

Is this because I freely share the theory that best friend marriages are the realest ones? Well hell. I'm hardly ready for a serious relationship again much less a marriage, so slow down, Buster. You've got a little wait before I'm the woman I feel is ready for marriage. I need time. And a healthy space to develop organically. I could use some friends. 

Or is it that friends feel like after a certain stage of friendship—like if maybe you endure enough conversations and play dates and group hangouts and bonus points for if you remember when I had braces or better yet knew me before braces or next level gods who knew me before a full set of adult teeth—you suddenly become entitled to cash your points in for romantic entitlement? Because lemme know... I will be way more selective in my players if I have to put prizes away for the ones who ascend to the hall of fame. I only have one cookie after all and I couldn't be expecting you all to share it. Crumbs don't make a meal, right? 

Forgive me for being salty. I wasn't supposed to write any more salty posts fr a while (even though I almost wrote a very salty one undoing all my progress and discussing all the nasty ways I've discovered my first love is human and flawed, but I chose to settle for this aside instead). 

Thursday 10 March 2016

Goodbye my first love.

I've had this post to write for weeks, and I've been procrastinating on it and today I had a good sit down and evaluated what exactly I've been putting off and why... And I realise that I've been putting off the goodbye, because I know that this is the one that really counts; this goodbye is the goodbye you won't get, because it's to the you I knew; the final goodbye - the one I've been holding onto and dragging out. I have decided though, I have decided to tell you goodbye and tuck you into a box of nostalgia and move along. 

I had initially planned that the goodbye was to be in two or three posts, but since I waited so long, I've outgrown the phases I was to have written those posts in. Now I will settle for one (probably very long post) with multiple parts. I had also written a note in my phone to guide the posts but I dropped my phone a couple of days ago, and so I can't get to whatever I'd written there either. So basically, I'm just gonna freestyle this one and hope it doesn't get choppy. Whatever happens, happens. 

Also, happy belated birthday. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't. I promised myself I wouldn't say anything else to you. I'm sorry. 


i.

I used to miss you with a fever, a cold sweat, panicked fits, the gnashing of teeth in my sleep. I used to miss you with a hot flush across my cheeks and my face. I used to miss you with a dry, aching swallow and a deep yearning. The ways I missed you begged for prescriptions - and you know how I love to self medicate... Vodka just made missing you feel like sharp, prickling pain. It made missing you feel like acid pumped into my blood. It made missing you feel like white hot fire in my mouth. That was worse. (You'd be pleased to know that I haven't been drinking anymore, if it mattered and if you knew and most importantly if we were anything and not nothing.)

I stopped missing you actively, all the time. I missed you in episodes, in moments that came and went. I missed you like a hot flash, like panic attacks, like my asthma. You were more of a dull ache than a strong pull. I missed you when something happened and you were the only person I wanted to tell, because you were the only person I knew who knew me that well. (I just wanted you to know that JK Rowling is publishing the script for The Cursed Child, that okay yes Arsenal wasn't going to stay at the top of the table for long, that I hadn't had an asthma attack in weeks and you would have been so happy, that I remembered that you promised to make curry chicken with me, that one time I sat on my leg so long I could actually swear that I was gonna have to get it amputated and sciatic nerves and things and my first mooting debate trial was fun and I didn't even have a panic attack, that I didn't fail Jurisprudence - I actually got a fucking B and wow how did that happen... but none of that matters anymore either.)

I've stopped missing you (almost all the time). I realised I was water on concrete. I just kept pouring and pouring and pouring onto you. And God I think maybe you were always fucking concrete, but maybe sometimes you were soft for me and sometimes I curled up on you despite the hardness... Ultimately, we proved that I had been skinning my knees on you for a long time. I've put you away, like toys from some childhood, some relics of better days when things were good but do not work anymore. I don't choke on nostalgia, or resentment, or bitterness. I don't ache for you.

"I changed my mind about you / I don't miss you like I used to." (I Love My Love by Reyna Biddy)
I have stopped avoiding all the places you memory lingers. The you I love is a memory now, a person that doesn't really exist anymore. You've become a ghost and these places are all for the living. I've stopped skirting through these places like stepping on graves. This new you, the you of the living world, I hardly see you either - but when I do, it doesn't bother me anymore.

I miss you now in the way I miss myself at fourteen, at ten, at eight, at five, at three. At fourteen, with the checkered Vans slip ons and the black skinny jeans and layering tees over long sleeves, playing obscene acoustic guitar, long dark hair and bangs tickling my eyelashes, the idea that I was invincible. At ten with curly hair and bruised knees and a boy best friend and purple football shoes and lunchtimes in the jungle of a garden with strawberry Monster Milk and laughing so hard we'd snort. At eight with my brother on the backseat of my dad's blue Mark II, long drives from Portland to Kingston, to Mandeville; the whole world a square of stars outside car window and my whole life ahead of me like the longest highway. At five, without fear. At three, with wonder. I miss you the way I miss all these people; without wanting you back, knowing you do not exist anymore. Not in the ways you did. I know that you cannot exist while the reality I know currently exists. I cannot be who I am now, with you.

"Neither can live while the other survives." (I've been dying to use a Harry Potter quote on this blog, thank you.)
So, in short, I miss you. I miss you a whole lot, and I probably will always miss you.... but not in the ways I used to miss you, and not the you that I think you are now. I miss the boy I met at fifteen with his untied tie and his growth spurt. I miss the boy I used to sit on my bedroom floor and talk to until he fell asleep. I miss the boy in the striped shirts and the stretched out white sock who held my hand while he drove through the Burger King drive-thru. I miss the boy with the dirty grey vans who sent me pictures of his mango Gatorade and the burning garbage bin and the orange highlighter. I miss the boy who made all the little things feel like big things. I miss the best friend I lost after four years and seven months. That you will always know that me better than anyone else.


ii.

I am so sorry. I have so very many things to be sorry for, and I want to not be sorry anymore. I want to move on from all the things I am sorry for and so I will apologise to you, like this, the only way I know how, the only option I have left.

I am sorry that I was so bad at saying how I felt - I felt so many things, all the time, and I never ever knew how to explain any of them to you. Like how I wanted to tell you that I wasn't always angry with you, I was just always tired of something that we could fix if maybe I knew how - I was tired of feeling like you wanted to be with someone else, tired of feeling like I wasn't helping (your panic attacks, your feelings of inadequacy, everything). I was tired, oh so tired, of feeling like you felt sorry for me, and that was why you stayed. I was so tired of being your unstable, inconsistent burden. I just always felt these things and never knew how to tell you any of these things.

I am sorry that I was the shittiest communicator in the whole world. I am sorry that I made excuses for being a shitty communicator. I'm sorry that I never tried to be better at communicating until it was too late. I am so sorry that I had so many things I needed to say and never said. I am so sorry for all the conversations that should have happened and shouldn't have happened, because I didn't know how to communicate properly.

I am sorry for all the nasty words I threw your way. Regardless of how I felt, and what happened, I shouldn't have said those things to you. I wish I could take those back, not because I didn't feel them, but because I'm sure they hurt you and hurting you didn't make anything better. Getting even wouldn't have fixed anything, and thankfully they didn't make us even. It just made me an ass. I'm sorry for being an ass.

I'm sorry for all those insecurities. Both for having them and for sharing them with you, but mostly for sharing them with you. I think insecurities can't be avoided, but I obsessed over those things and I let them drive me crazy. I turned them into a wedge between us, and when I couldn't take it anymore - I shared them with you. I shouldn't have, and I wish I hadn't. Now they hang there, in that space, heavier than they should have been. I am sorry I expected you to carry those burdens with me. I suppose your response was the one I deserved.

I am sorry for the overreactions (particularly the overreaction about the rumours I thought you started, and the overreaction about the stupid essay you had to go home to write, and the overreaction about a condom). I am sorry for the arguments I started (the one about the asthma attack, and the one in May and all the little ones that left nicks like shaving with a new razor).

I am sorry for everything, even the things I did that I can't remember and the things that you think don't matter and the things that probably don't actually matter. I am sorry that we both hurt each other a lot. I am so sorry for all the horrible things in four years and seven months.

Very importantly, I am sorry for the impression of you I've held for four whole months. I am sorry that before that I had you on a pedestal. Both times I forgot that you were human and failed to leave you room to be just that. I am sorry, and I am letting both of these things go. You are no longer on a pedestal and I am letting go of the way I felt about you in the past few months. You are human, and I acknowledge both the good and the bad. I am sorry that this wasn't always the case.


iii.

Now I want to tell you a million thank yous. I want to tell you thank you for listening, for caring, for making sure I ate, for worrying when I was sick or sad or anxious or going through things I didn't want to talk about. You were one of the most gentle people in my life and it sometimes still makes me a little teary with gratitude.

I don't think you know just how much I have to be grateful to you for. You don't realise how much better you managed to make the shitty parts of me. You held me together when I tried to hold everything else together. You kept me grounded, reminded me to be gentle with myself and take care of myself. You told me it was okay every time you saw me cry. (And here I had to pause because I tried to blink away my tears to keep typing and I couldn't... you know how hard I fight tears, and you know they always win.) And my God, you saw me cry so many times. Thank you for holding me tight to your chest until the tears passed.

Thank you for believing in me, for seeing things in me that I couldn't see in myself and for reminding me of those things when I needed to hear it most. I still hope that one day I'll be the great things you thought I was. Thank you.

Less sappy of me, but still kinda sappy... Thank you for the little things. For feeding me, for the compliments, for the hugs, for rubbing my head and my back. For making me laugh. For indulging me with shows and videos with never waning enthusiasm. For the kisses - all the different kinds of kisses, all very appreciated. Thank you for the conversations - the years of conversations. Thank you for teaching me lots of new things - I appreciate how well rounded you helped me become in four years.

Thank you for the littler things. For approving my selfies. For writing things that would make me smile on the corners of my notes. For wake up calls when I was worried about oversleeping. For fries and icecream. For funny pictures. For sharing moments of your day with me. For stolen moments of comfort. For letting me sleep on you. For letting me steal your food. For the silly things. For the inside jokes (walking from the bowl only takes three minutes after all). For just being you.

Thank you, separately and very seriously, for being a safe, nurturing and trusting environment for exploration and experimentation. For never taking anything too seriously, and indulging fantasies - both shared and personal. Thank you for being a safe, considerate first. And yes, I'm taking about that.


iv.

Finally, even though we are nothing, we once were everything. I don't think we'll be friends. I don't think we'll ever really be much of anything. In a few years, I'm sure I'll just be a name that you might stumble across in your memory and you'll remember but not really. One day I'll just be one of many. It won't matter.

But for a long time, it mattered. It mattered a whole lot.

It mattered so much, and I won't deny that, but I want you to find something that matters more. I want both of us to find better. I want us to do the things we did wrong, right. I want us to be happy. Both of us.

I'm actually really happy, if it matters to you. I hope you're happy too.

In your next relationship, and the ones after if there are ones after and what not, I want you to find someone who loves you so very very much.

I want you to find someone who sees you at your worst and holds you til your worst is gone, and loves you still. I want you to have someone to hold through heaven and hell, and I want you to know that both things are normal in a relationship. I want you to find someone worth staying with despite the hell for the heaven, even if you find yourselves in hell way more often than you find yourselves in heaven. I want the heaven to be worth it for you. I want you to find someone who loves you so much that the hell feels like heaven. I want you to be so happy that fire feels like laughter.

I want you to find someone who is proud to have you, even if you still think you're inadequate. I want you to find someone who thinks you're amazing, like really really really amazing, from the top of your head all the way to your tippy toes. I want you to find someone who loves you through the caveman stubble and the policeman/creepy uncle mustache and not just on the "oh yes daddy" days. I want you to find someone who won't mind your stretched out socks, and the holes in your underwear and the fact that almost all the shirts you own are striped.

I want you to find someone who makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you scream, makes you understand why everyone says love makes you crazy - I want you to be crazy about them. I want you to find real, pure, honest love. Unconditional love. Selfless love. I want you to find someone who doesn't mind when you're sick and doesn't resent you for all the time they'll spend taking care of you. I want you to find someone you want to take care of, too. One day you'll both be old and taking care of each other and it won't be exciting, but I want you to have that too.

I want you to find someone who won't even mind that you sleep across the bed. I want all these lovely things for you. I hope you find all these amazing things. (And in a way, I hope I never have to know if you ever do find these things. I don't want to know if you don't, because I don't want to feel bad for you or bad about you or anything. And I don't want to know if you do, because I don't ever want to know how someone else is doing it better than I did and I don't want to compare myself to someone else, because God I'm not doing anymore of that for you. In my head, it is enough to want these things for you without having to know about them in real life.)

I wish you the very very very best, because you mattered. You mattered so much to me and I don't hate you, and I don't resent you but I can't write about you anymore and I can't cry about you anymore and this is it because this is all I have left. I don't have anything left to offer you, and I know that what I have is not enough so I will leave it here and I'll wish you the best and I'll move on.

Goodbye my first love.

Tuesday 9 February 2016

On finding a purple and grey high school tie in the back of my closet, pathetically titled like everything else seems to be

I decided to take the rest of the week off and come home (mostly because I'm tired of eating campus food and I have like two or three loads of dirty clothes, sheets and towels to wash - but also just because), and tonight, in an attempt to be productive without actually touching the pile of work I brought home, I decided to clean out my closet.

In doing so, I found a purple and grey school uniform tie knotted around a hanger in the back of my closet. Now, the thing about this tie is that it has been in the back of my closet since 2011, which really doesn't seem like that long for something to be hiding in the back of one's closet. Except 2011 was a whole dozen and a half lifetimes ago. In the time between then and now, we have become different people dozens and dozens of times. That tie hung there, knotted around that hanger, through our sixteen month relationship. Through the months short of a year that we didn't speak. While we were awkwardly making small talk at the orthodontist. While we slowly relearnt our ropes in 2014 and pushed all the boundaries. While we had shared anxiety about moving to university. It stayed here, miles from us there, while I made you my second first and so on. It stayed here while we made something ugly out of our relationship. Stayed here while I packed your things into a box, even that necklace I kept for four years because I loved you that whole time (the point being that this tie should have been in the box of things I didn't need to cherish anymore because I was letting it all go, even this stupid tie had I remembered its existence). It stayed here while we stopped speaking and I deleted your number and unfriended you on Facebook.

And... It's still here.

*glares at the offending tie*

I don't want your tie. I don't want it in my room. I don't want any more reminders that once upon a time (once upon a tie hehe) this wasn't what we were. I don't yearn for you anymore, but I also don't want the softness of nostalgia crawling into my bedroom because nostalgia is my real enemy - it keeps reminding me of the person you were, the person I actually yearn for, the person that doesn't exist. (And as I think of the offensive tie, I remember that once you and I sat in this bedroom together - that tie hanging in the back of the closet, silently waiting for this day - and I want to set this room on fire and burn this house down. You see how this stupid tie came to ruin my night?)

Now I can't just dump the tie, because though I'm sure I've dumped material objects of more significant real value before, I don't believe in dumping material objects of actual value (you know, sentimental value and whatnot) and this tie has sentimental value to me as my exboyfriend's tie, but I'm sure it must have some sentimental value to you as your high school tie... (Which lends the question of Why did you even give this to me in the first place?) I mean, I'd like to politely offer it back to you... but I will most certainly not to be digging up your number to message you again, and certainly not over a fucking bumbo pussy raas claat tie because yuh nah make me feel like shit and blue tick me and that foolishness over a damn tie. My pride is still recovering. ...I could just, like, thumbtack it to your door? But then I'd have to go out of my damn raas way to walk to your block to return this stupid tie, and I swore to myself I was never going out of my way to you or your hall again. ...Another option is that I could just give your neighbour to give it to you, but I'm currently not really maintaining much of a friendship with him either, and I refuse to stir him into this pot of petty porridge we've cooked up like two asses. Plus, how would I explain this? "Oh, I'm returning a tie he doesn't need and won't wear and probably doesn't even remember because I'm very serious about keeping all the sentiment out of my life because sentiment invites nostalgia and I need no nostalgia because I don't want to miss a person who doesn't exist anymore and ugh, I just don't want to remember how happy I felt four years ago when he insisted I take the stupid tie because he doesn't make me happy anymore. Just, like, give it to him and stop looking at me like that."

So I guess I'll just.... leave it here?

Or I could stuff it into the bottom of my bag when I'm packing to go back to school and then wait until I get drunk, like properly drunk... like, fucking wasted, and then do some stupid shit like let the chips land where they may and show up at your door with a stupid tie, drunk off my ass. (This is a joke. A really dry, sardonic joke... but a joke nonetheless. A joke only I will get. And maybe you would have, if... you know... I dunno. But yeah. This is a nod at that one time I really missed you, and my friends made me drink lots of liquor to make me forget I missed you, and then I showed up drunk at your door and that was probably up there with the stupidest things I've ever done to wound my pride... but is now just a joke that I laugh about all the time, by myself.)

Anyways. It's a tie. Belonging to the old you. The you I miss fondly. The you before you rolled in glitter and forgot you were gold and turned into some glittery, less lovely version of the niceness you were. And I'm going to roll it into a ball and throw it back into my closet and stop pretending to be productive and just give in and watch Bob's Burgers for like four hours, without shame.

I'm actually way too happy this month, and lately, to be obsessing over a tie... and on a related note, I've been writing the last post in this series for a few days now. It's sort of an 'I miss you, but not really and not in the ways I used to' post, and is supposed to be the "last" (maybe) post I write about you, and without bias or objection. I may turn it into two posts, or three depending. But the point is that the end is near, and the feeling is almost all gone and I'm trying to make the most of this new objective perspective it's given me to write the end. I'm so excited it is almost palpable.

(lol i write like i have readers, but i do... these posts will be read by lots of different people. lots of different versions of me. mes from the future who will look back at these posts and remember these feelings, and that's why i write. it matters to me that i can reflect, look back, remember. it matters that i documented these feelings because they mattered, then - now? - and i will want to know what mattered even when it no longer matters)

Monday 4 January 2016

The thing I've learnt about letting go is this

It doesn't happen all at once like we think it does. You don't actually wake up one day and everything is suddenly, magically better and you don't know how or why but you don't hurt. It's not quite like that.

It's more like taking two steps forward, three steps forward, one backward and so on... Until you look up and you're there, and you look back and the person you've been holding onto is so far away that you can't run back to them anymore, and a part of you doesn't want to. It's like uncurling your fingers one at a time, until your hands are empty. Sometimes, your fist is going to clench reflexively - some days you're going to want nothing more than to run back to that person, despite whatever happened between you - and on those days you have to start from scratch, opening each finger until your empty palms are turned down.

Letting go is not easy. Grieving is not easy. I know these things to be true, but you know what else I know to be truer? That holding on to someone who has let go of you is even harder than letting them go. You are hanging onto the rope so tightly that you're blistering. You're tying yourself up in the rope like you're going to use to hang yourself, and if you keep this up, you will hang yourself with the rope and they will not be there to untie you.

This is not what I wanted. A year ago feels like a thousand feelings ago, two different people ago. A year ago feels like some alternate dimension, like some world where those things can happen that is not here but not there either. A year ago is immortalised in memory - two kids on the backseat of a car with no resentment and nothing to let go of. Two different kids.

I am nostalgic, but I am strong. I am not grieving anymore. I can listen to our songs, and I have no desire to reopen a door for you with the intention of seeking some closure that doesn't exist. And, yes, sometimes I relapse and those are the days I document the most... but most days, I am an open palm. And those are the days I hold out for, even on days when I am clenched fist.



I went to the beach two days ago, and sat on the sand and had that "aha!" moment when I realised that this life, my life, all these things; they're all transient. There will be a day when I don't exist, and the people who knew me will not exist, and I will be a block of stone in a yard of graves of people who don't really exist anymore either. The things I feel - the good, the bad, the ugly, the really ugly - will not matter. The days I spent curled under purple comforter, both too empty and too full to cry, and the days I tipped my head back and let laughter spill out from inside me... none of these days will be remembered. Everything goes, and I'm trying to be at peace with that. Everything goes. Even me, and even you. It will all go - washed away like the sands in the tide. And I have to let it all go.

Friday 25 December 2015

Lessons on forgiveness, patience and flawed love

The best thing about going through a breakup is the learning. This is your opportunity to be unapologetically dedicated to growth. Particularly, for me, this is a chance to be unapologetically dedicated to me, because somewhere along the road I ended up a little too dedicated to someone else and it became my undoing when that someone turned into someone else.

There are a number of things that I've learned in the last seven weeks exactly (since, you know, the only thing I've written about in months), about love in particular. One of those things is summed up best by Lauryn Hill somewhere around age 25 when she said that human rarely get love right - real love, the kind of love that builds confidence and doesn't breed insecurity. We don't know how to do unconditional love. "We don't know love like we should. We always talk about 'I have unconditional love'... 'Unconditional love is'... we don't even know it. Because if a person stops stimulating us, we stop loving them." That's what Lauryn said, and she's right. We humans don't get the unconditional love thing, and I think that's totally okay. We're here to learn the whole love thing - if we knew unconditional love without learning then we'd be God. We're not God, we're human. We know human love.

Human love is selfish, and sometimes angry. Human love lacks patience, understanding, forgiveness, empathy (my favourite word, it would appear lol) and it comes with ten thousand and one different conditions. I love you when you're in a good mood. Condition. I love you when I need affection. Condition. I love you while you satisfy my needs. Condition. All these conditions that our love comes with, and part of the growing from this experience requires that I acknowledge all the conditions that my own love comes with. My love is conditional just like yours was. I loved you on the conditions that you were understanding in the ways that I needed you to be, and gentle and soft and honest. I loved you on the condition that you made me feel safe (in more ways that you could understand, I suppose... I wanted the safety of feeling like you still wanted me, even when new things were shinier). So, no, neither of us knew unconditional love - the kind of love that makes relationships last. We knew human love. The kind of love that makes relationships fall apart once the shimmer wears off and the tarnish starts to show. The kind of love that grows tired. The kind of love that succumbs to arguments, to insecurities, to indifference. The kind of love that disrespects. The kind of love is inconsiderate towards each other. The kind of love that doesn't care who hurts. The kind of love that becomes a competition that someone has to win. The kind of love that knows shades of grey.

And, God, I'm so tired of shades of grey. I'm so tired of making excuses for the shades of grey that someone shows. I'm so tired of being unsure, of being insecure. I'm tired of not knowing. I'm tired of living in shades and tints and never really in black or white. Even now, almost two months after the breakup, I don't know where we are. We're still in shades of grey and I'm still making excuses. There is still a giant question mark where the idea of closure haunts me at night, where I wake up nailed to my cross and I don't understand why. So, I'm committing myself to learning and growing and mastering something closer to unconditional love so that I can attract someone else who has also tried to master something closer to unconditional love, and we can love in black and white.

Part of the growing and the learning also requires reflecting on patience and forgiveness. I'm convinced that these two things - in an environment of love - can fix anything. Bear with me on this one. So long as two people (two, not one) are willing to make the effort to be patient with each other and forgive each other for the ways in which they have hurt each other, two people can patch up the holes in their relationship with the ingredients of unconditional love. The trick, however, is that these things seem really easy... before you add human nature into the equation. The human nature that says I am having a bad day and your tone is aggressive, so this is about to be an argument. That human nature is impatient - it wants better, now. It wants easier, now. It wants satisfaction, now. That human nature is also unforgiving, and knows of injustice and rage and blame and anger. That unforgiving human nature is resentful (so, so, so, so resentful and full of hurt and misplaced anger and doesn't know who to blame and stays up all night crying and trying not to hate you and nailing myself to this cross and crying as I type, even now, and desperate for closure and regretting love you and all these feelings that I have).

The patience and the forgiveness cannot fix what is broken now - we don't speak, closure is impossible and all we have is resentment, regret and ashes. I have given up on slamming myself repeatedly into your concrete walls. I am tired of shouting into the wind. I am so fucking tired of blue ticks. Fuck your blue ticks. I will be patient with myself, I will forgive myself and I will close this myself. I am learning my lesson in unconditional love so I can love someone deserving of love when I am deserving of love. Before that, I will learn my lesson in unconditional love so I can love myself. I forgive myself for settling for excuses for shades of grey. I forgive myself for laying myself bare. I forgive myself for tearing myself open and pouring myself out to compensate. I forgive myself for wasting seven whole weeks grieving (and I will forgive myself for any and all grieving to come, with time - until I grieve no more). I forgive myself for the ways in which I let you hurt me. I forgive myself for trying to mend a relationship you didn't want. I forgive myself for becoming desperate and pathetic and a joke. I forgive myself for becoming insecure about being unwanted. I forgive myself, again and again. I forgive myself, and I am patient with the process.

I have not decided what to do from here, and I feel like I still owe you some consideration and some effort of some sort - even though I have to tell myself over and over again that you neither want nor deserve these things, or any things from me. I have considered politely informing you that I will be deleting your number and changing my SIM card, since you claimed that one time that what you wanted was not to be rudely thrown out of my life - so instead of rudely throwing you out of my life, I will politely inform you that I have determined that there is no way you can remain in my life that is healthy. None of these things matter however - you don't respond to anything, you don't actually give a fuck. You will not be thrown out of my life - you have already made your way out of my life, I'm merely ensuring that you cannot come back, which is also pointless because you have no interest in looking back nor an interest in closure. What I do from here is still undecided, but I do know that I will use the new year as an excuse to do whatever I need to do to learn my lesson and move on, closure or not. It's just that it all seems so pointless, and that what I do matters so very little because I will still have to submit to the feelings until they pass. Changing my number will merely mean that you will not know how to call me or text me, but that's the thing about the past... it will always know how to reach you.

This post wandered very far left from where it started, but that's okay. It's all part of the process, I suppose. I'm very all over the place. I write and cry, but that's also okay. Every time I cry, I remind myself that this is me submitting to the emotion so that it can pass. And this too shall pass. Everything does. I'm learning the lessons as they come so that the pain that teaches said lessons can go. Now, this chapter in my story is weaved with tears, but one day I'll look back at this chapter and the story will not make me cry. Until then, I wait patiently and forgive myself and love myself unconditionally and pray for some kind of peace. That's all.

Friday 18 December 2015

A river of tears keeps springing from my eyes: a post that is not a post

I've barely slept, and everything feels hollow. I'm so frustrated and tired of being miserable and hating myself. I let love ruin me. I convinced myself that love was to bear pain until you split open - and I continue to split myself open. I love you so much that I can’t find room to love myself.

How much longer do I intend to drag this cross behind me? To stagger under the weight of how I feel about you? Every time I set it down, I pick it back up and my God, it n e v e r gets any lighter.

I never want to feel like this again. I never want to know love if I can’t love myself more than the person I love. My God, I loved you so much that I forgot to value myself and love myself. Now that you’re gone I have this empty hole where love opened me up and poured me out and what is love if not the thing that leaves you empty?

I’m so tired of hating myself, carrying this cross for you and nailing myself to it. I’m tired of tears. I’m frustrated and I’m miserable. I’m tired of constantly wanting to fix things and talk to you and find some kind of fucking closure that does not exist. I am so tired. I’m so tired.

And now I wait for this river to run dry.


Post is not a post, post is an attempt to write my frustration out so I can sleep. God, I just want to sleep. I want this river to run dry, my heart to harden and I want to sleep. I want this to be over. What is the lesson here? Can You please hurry up and teach me the lesson here so this class can be over? Please. Please. PLEASE.

Wednesday 25 November 2015

Copying an entire post thread straight fromTumblr; food for thought

fr3ight-train:
acutelesbian:
fat-thin-skinny:
acutelesbian:
A lot of people ask me what my biggest fear is, or what scares me most. And I know they expect an answer like heights, or closed spaces, or people dressed like animals, but how do I tell them that when I was 17 I took a class called Relationships For Life and I learned that most people fall out of love for the same reasons they fell in it. That their lover’s once endearing stubbornness has now become refusal to compromise and their one track mind is now immaturity and their bad habits that you once adored is now money down the drain. Their spontaneity becomes reckless and irresponsible and their feet up on your dash is no longer sexy, just another distraction in your busy life.
Nothing saddens and scares me like the thought that I can become ugly to someone who once thought all the stars were in my eyes.
this fucks me up every single time
I never expected this to be my most popular poem out of the hundreds I’ve written. I was extremely bitter and sad when I wrote this and I left out the most beautiful part of that class.
After my teacher introduced us to this theory, she asked us, “is love a feeling? Or is it a choice?” We were all a bunch of teenagers. Naturally we said it was a feeling. She said that if we clung to that belief, we’d never have a lasting relationship of any sort.
She made us interview a dozen adults who were or had been married and we asked them about their marriages and why it lasted or why it failed. At the end, I asked every single person if love was an emotion or a choice.
Everybody said that it was a choice. It was a conscious commitment. It was something you choose to make work every day with a person who has chosen the same thing. They all said that at one point in their marriage, the “feeling of love” had vanished or faded and they weren’t happy. They said feelings are always changing and you cannot build something that will last on such a shaky foundation.
The married ones said that when things were bad, they chose to open the communication, chose to identify what broke and how to fix it, and chose to recreate something worth falling in love with.
The divorced ones said they chose to walk away.
Ever since that class, since that project, I never looked at relationships the same way. I understood why arranged marriages were successful. I discovered the difference in feelings and commitments. I’ve never gone for the person who makes my heart flutter or my head spin. I’ve chosen the people who were committed to choosing me, dedicated to finding something to adore even on the ugliest days.
I no longer fear the day someone who swore I was their universe can no longer see the stars in my eyes as long as they still choose to look until they find them again.
This is so fucking important and I think it’s something I needed right now
I remember when I first reblogged this, and this just gives such a crazy different perspective.

Thursday 19 November 2015

Oh how time flies

A year can change everything. In a year, I've gone from here to there to here again. A year ago we were in an undefined relationship, pretty crazy about each other (I guess, but I can't speak for you) and literally giving no fucks and living life.

Now, a year later, we tried the relationship and failed and just harbour terrible feelings towards each other for all the mean things we said and did when we were too hurt to care whose feelings we were hurting.

But this wasn't supposed to be a long post, or a negative post. My mood tonight is tentative. It's good but it's fragile. I was just thinking about how a year changed so many things. Maybe a year from now I will look back, not hating you or resenting you, and be in a really good place.

Maybe a year from now I'll be in love with myself and happily single. Oh, God, I hope that's where I am a year from now.

I'm home for the weekend because nothing is better than being around people who love you and support you and care about you in ways you need to be loved, supported and cared for. I've been fed curry chicken, tucked into bed, hugged and cuddled. I fell asleep on my brother's bed and he covered me with a comforter and left me to sleep for hours because apparently I'm wearing my problems on my face and carrying sorrows in the bags under my eyes. My mommy has taken away the little stack of textbooks and instructed that I use this weekend like a vacation and take care of myself first. My daddy is being more gentle than usual.

I agree. Maybe I need to spend more time taking care of myself.

I ain't got nothing but time, and that's okay.

Turning on the tap in my mind to run the thoughts til they run like water and go cold, and I can sleep.

An attempt to clear the thoughts out of my head so I'm not so heavy in my bed. 


Sometimes, like now, I miss our relationship a little. I miss the lazy Sunday mornings I spent falling in love with you like wishing on stars (my stars turned out to be airplanes and I wished on things that were always leaving) and the sleepy Saturday nights with our bodies stretched out in bed with the fan on. I miss car rides and long conversation. I miss icecream dates and late night phone conversations.

But then the longer I think about these things, the more the nostalgia fades and the memories crack. I've managed to turn them over and over in my hands until I've found the sharp corners, the things that unravel the dreams by the seams. All those memories soured by the impression of you that you've left me with. All the memories I had in colour are turning black and white, the greyscale of disappointment. Lazy Sunday mornings feel flimsy, sleepy Saturday nights hollow. The car rides and long conversation feel like fillers, stuffing and fluff. The icecream dates and late night conversations like punctuation in long sentences of blabber. Everything tastes like acid now.

I know that one day - maybe, hopefully not one day soon - I will love cuddling on Sunday mornings and watching movies on Saturday nights again. One day I will experience these things again in colour. I will eat all the icecream and have all the long conversations with someone new, someone that is not you. And this is the realisation that broke the mourning. I will move on from you, and quickly too. I will not linger where I am not wanted. I have grown too big for these memories of you, the you I loved. I fit awkwardly in the past. I have done so much growing in a week. I have grown and stretched. I no longer fit in my bed. Everything is spilling out of my head.

Thinking about you does not hurt. Missing you does not hurt. Seeing you does not hurt. Hearing your name does not hurt. It all just tastes like acid burning at the back of my throat. Everything has a sour taste of resentment. I tried so hard not to resent you, but now I submit fully to this like all the other stages I have gone through in a week and a half. I submit so it will pass. I will let my resentment colour you black and white. I will forget that once you were red and blue too. I have taken you off the pedestal. I accept that you will not be the boy in the greyscale memories anymore. You too do not fit in those memories. You have shrunk yourself down, squeezed yourself in a box, tucked yourself into a corner. I have let you. I am letting you.

I am working on forgiving you. Every morning I wake hoping I will stop gnashing my teeth at the sound of your name. I realise this has a lot more to do with me than it does with you - I held you to unrealistic expectations. I expected you to be kind, gentle, understanding, soft, full, honest, godlike. I held you to these things like knife to throat. I forgot to make room for you to be human. I forgot to make room for you to be human. I am working on forgiving myself, too. Forgiving myself is more important anyways. (And I hope I don't sound selfish, but I am selfish. I am more important to me than you are. Even if this wasn't always the case.)

I am also working on the bitterness. I still have moments when I hope you wander absently into those corners that you tucked me into, and that you regret some of the choices that you made. I hope sometimes I cross your mind and it makes you taste acid, too. I find myself passing your car and hoping you sometimes sit there and remember me on the backseat. I hope in your memories I am laughing. I hope while you remember me, and you regret, I am still laughing. I hope you miss the way I love you, sometimes, and I hope you struggle to find someone who loves you the way I did. I hope you sample ten thousand kinds of love looking for my taste again. I know this is all very childish, but I want to know that I meant something to you even though you pretend you are unfazed. I want to know that I can move you to regret, because I am human. But I am working on wishing you well, wishing you better.

I am surprisingly at peace with a number of things. I am at peace knowing that I did the best I could have. I no longer regret stripping myself to skin and insecurity for you. I am not sorry that my insecurities must have choked the life out of you. I know I tried, and that's enough. One day I'll find someone who will try too - and we will try together and never give up. I won't be perfect and they won't be perfect either, but it will be perfect enough. I am at peace with the end of our relationship. I am at peace with the thought that maybe we will never be anything to each other, ever again. I am at peace knowing there is probably nothing left for us to return to - not even friendship. I will not force anything, and that will be okay. I have run out of urges to message you. I have run out of things left to say to you. I don't feel like I owe you any more of my honesty. I don't even have to block you anymore. I don't have to hide your name, your number. It does not haunt me. I am at peace with the end.

Now, I am hopeful. I have lots of thoughts about the next few weeks, months, years. I have made so many plans. So many little things I look forward to. So much love around me. So many friends. So many adventures. So much me. I leave you behind and press hopefully on. I feel like I can take a great big bite of the world, by myself. I feel the healing and the growth starting in my bones. This will be better. I will be better.

It's 5:38 AM, and there is a lot going on in my head but it's all okay.

Monday 16 November 2015

Therapy take 5, also unsure of what to title this

This post comes after some heavy ass reflection, and comes with a heavy dose of the resentment I'm trying to avoid. I want to ask him a lot of questions, but I won't. He is a dead end. He's the last place I have been able to find closure.

I am not mourning for or grieving over the relationship. Not really.

I would have been able to come to terms with his choice to end the relationship. I am not a child, and I don't think I am unreasonable. I know you can't force people to stay. I would have been able to accept his decision with a relative amount of peace.

But no, I am torn the fuck up not because of the end of a relationship but because the person I was in a relationship with has somehow managed to shock the fuck out of me. The person I was in a relationship with made me feel like shit while trying to end a dying relationship that I think really wasn't either of our faults more than it was both of our faults.

Ending a relationship is one thing.
Ending a relationship with hurt feelings that could have been avoided is another thing.

Now after a week and a half, I feel it really hard to believe that the person who claimed that they loved me could have broken up with me the way they did, and responded me the way they have since. I feel it hard to believe that that was done as considerately as possible.

Or is it that I didn't deserve consideration?
Was I THAT bad a girlfriend that it was totally irrelevant how I felt after ten months of a relationship? Was I THAT horrible a communicator, a person?

I want to ask what I did to deserve the ridiculously shitty way you treated me in the last week and a half (with the exception of the 48 hours in which you humoured me, which now feels like a slap in the face all things considered - as now I'm not sure how genuine any of that was) but I know that you will just read my message and not reply to my unproductive conversation.

And yes, yes, I remember you saying it was spur of the moment and blah blah and whatnot, but I feel like that is adding insult to injury. That is a flimsy excuse that means so very little. You acted like I had you cornered, backed up against the wall with no options. My insecurities must have been armed with guns and knives, driving a military grade tank. Our relationship must have been a prison. I must have been choking you.

I agree. Our relationship probably needed to end. Maybe it was so far as to be described as toxic. I am at peace with the fact that it has ended, but I can't seem to find peace in the way you acted towards me. I can't seem to understand why you are even still reacting the way you are acting towards me (with the most defensive responses to my messages as possible) - as if I have been hurting you this whole time and am continuing to hurt you. Why did you never tell me I was treating you like shit, if such was the case? Why did you never say that I was a horrible person, so that when you decided to treat me as such, I would properly understand that this was what I deserved?

Regardless, I'm not sure there is a relationship for us to return to - so I have stopped wanting that, even if just temporarily as I am being clouded by hurt and resentment. Maybe at some point in the future I will be overcome with nostalgia and I will miss all the great things about our relationship. I'm also not sure there is a friendship for us to return to either. I'm not sure there's anything left for us.

And that's okay. I'm just working on forgiving you and moving on with my life. Coming to terms with all the horrible things that I must have done, and your response. Vowing never to put myself in this position again. Thank you for that.

Today (and yesterday), I did not cry. I did not miss you any more than manageable. I just sat in my tub of hurt and resentment and thought about how you treated me. And how maybe you weren't the person I thought you were. That's all.

"Unscrew the locks from their doors. Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs."

It's the great thing about words that keeps me coming back - the way how everybody can interpret something differently. Everything means something different to someone else. This quote by Walt Whitman is no different.

The annotations on shmoop.com explain these two lines as follows: "These lines express Whitman's radicalism.... They are humorous because Whitman initially decides the best way to get through this metaphorical door is to unlock it (sounds reasonable), but then he says, oh, what the heck, and tears the entire door from its frame!"

Aside from at face value, this line meant to me that there are more than ways of getting through obstacles. Sometimes, you must simply tear the whole damn door out of the jamb.

Now I could unscrew the lock from the door (and go through the break up motions in my corner, taking up the least space possible) or I could simply rip the door itself from the jamb (and be as recklessly me as I always am). Which one do you think I've chosen?

I have denied no feeling. I have resisted no urge. I am submitting fully to the feelings until they pass (which sometimes blows up in my face, yes, okay, but still).

And that's probably why all the speculating outsiders have made it a point of duty to concern themselves with how thoroughly this all affects me (how emotional I am, blah blah) whilst my exboyfriend has seemingly been coping just fine. And understandably so - considering that this is what he wanted. Now, you see, I'm not really all that mad about the speculation, as people will always talk - I'm just a little mad that maybe they're right. I'm beginning to think the same things as they all are.

At first this breakup seemed a little like we were both really upset and hurting and torn up, blah blah. We both seemed to be clinging and blah blah. But that "at first" seemed to last about 48 hours. And now that I look back, I'm a moron.

The first few hours post breakup, exboyfriend who I shall refer to from henceforth as X (okay, yes, I think I'm funny) did a couple things that made me look (and feel, don't forget feel) like an ass. Not easy being broken up with on WhatsApp with no explanation, but then to walk past and overhear people casually discussing their negative impressions and feelings about you in public and very loudly? Not a nice feeling. Aaaaand it never quite helped that the response to this from X was very dismissively "Oh we were leaving and I have no inside voice blah blah" which made me feel worse. Overall, it kinda seemed like X was being a jerk. An unfazed, insensitive, unempathetic (is that a word? It just seemed like the opposite of empathetic was most appropriate and empathy is an ability or capacity to relate to the feelings of another) jerk.

Then I made a number of excuses for that night and decided I wanted to move along and not hate or resent him blah blah, and whatnot. He seemed fair enough after that and that was good enough for me, who still had him up on a pedestal (and possibly still do).

Then I went through a number of crazy irrational and crazy imbalanced fits of sending him irrational messages, deleting photos and then undeleting photos, so on and so forth. And looking back at those WhatsApp conversations made me feel like an idiot, every single time.... because I was all over the place. And he was his usual brick wall self. Replies like "Ahh" and the infamous X long wait, blue tick, no reply. Lovely. There I go making an ass out of myself again.

Now I realise that I was very wrong. And that sometimes when people show you that they do not care (or when it would appear as such), you should stop putting your vulnerability on display and go ahead and bottle that shit back up and let it rot on the inside until it goes away/kills you.

Anyways. People may continue to speculate. I am torn up and emotional and going through the motions. I am trying to make sense of this. Trying to cope. But I will now try to cope in ways that don't make me out to be the crazy ex-girlfriend that bursts into tears at the mention of his name (which never happened, hmph - I'm most offended that people think that this is how bad it is) and continue to unscrew the doors from the jambs until I can care as little as he seems to.

I will now return to watching Paper Towns (from which this quote used as the title came) and eating a soggy leftover half of a spicy Zinger from KFC. I will also not expect a reply to that WhatsApp conversation in which X assumed I was attacking him (which I wasn't) that I started because my first instinct is obviously to turn to X because he was, is, whatever the person I tried hardest to work things out with. I will also try to not breed resentment, which is becoming harder and harder the more I overthink.

Post has not been proofread, probably makes no sense and is all over the place. As usual.

Friday 13 November 2015

Reminders to myself, another sloppy attempt to swim and not sink

Forgive me, for I like to write with numbers and in lists. I'm obsessive. This will not be proofread, like the others in this series of sessions of therapy. Errors are part of the journey.

Update: a week-ish since breakup. I have not cried today.



Dearest, as darkness draws you close and you slip beneath its surface and water slips into your nose and mouth, cling to these things and rise. Rise until breathing is easy. Rise until it doesn't hurt anymore. Rise, and rise, and rise again. 




One

Remember that they will not be him, no matter how hands feel like hands in the dark. They will not sound like him, smile like him or make you feel like him. Do not try to use them to replace him. They are not his understudies in your show.

Do not try to find someone else to fill the space where he used to be until you are ready, and until you can appreciate this new whoever for all that they are. That is not fair to them, or fair to you.

Be smart.

Do not rebound.

And if you slip up, please do not choose to ruin the new friendship with this boy. You will regret it. He is an amazing friend, who is helping you cope as best he can. Do not use him.



Two

"Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck."

The Universe operates in mysterious ways, and God... You see, God doesn't make mistakes. There are forces that you must believe that operate on your behalf to protect you from the things that mean you ruin. Read, and reread THEORIES ABOUT THE UNIVERSE by Blythe Baird.

"I am trying to see things in perspective.My dog wants a bite of my peanut butter
chocolate chip bagel. I know she cannot
have this, because chocolate makes dogs
very sick. My dog does not understand this.
She pouts and wraps herself around my leg
like a scarf and purrs and tries to convince me
to give her just a tiny bit. When I do not give in,she eventually gives up and lays in the corner,
under the piano, drooping and sad. I hope the
universe has my best interest in mind like I have
my dogs. When I want something with my whole
being, and the universe withholds it from me,
I hope the universe thinks to herself: “Silly girl.
She thinks this is what she wants, but she
does not understand how it will hurt."

Perhaps this is the universe protecting me from ruin. 
And oh, how love ruins women.



Three

Remember that he is human. He is not a god and you are not a monster. Take him down from the pedestal that you put him on. See that he, too, has flaws. There are things you will not miss. 

He was great, in some ways, and not so great, in others. You don't have to keep idolising him. You may now acknowledge that there are ways in which he was flawed. You may now acknowledge that he did things that hurt you, especially in the last week and a half - and you must now stop making excuses for them, and forgive him.

Forgive him for the things, even if he is not sorry for the things. Forgive him. Work on forgetting, not so he can have a second (third? fourth? how are we counting these?) chance but so that you can have a second chance. Don't hold on to the ways he hurt you in an attempt to fuel your recovery. Let them go. Let him go. 

You can now break the silence wide open and fill it with words and laughter and love. You can tear the bricks out of the wall. Word by word, you may now heal. Answer the questions for yourself. Stop expecting the words from anyone but yourself. You may now uninvest your tears in someone else's silences. Stop unblocking him and turning to him for closure, and close the chapter yourself. Be okay with never speaking to him again. Remind yourself that he doesn't seem to have anything left to say to you. (Also, as a bitter aside: stop rereading that stupid Whatsapp conversation and delete the fucking chat. Delete his number again. Block him. Do not keep digging for meaning in the meaningless words he uses. "Why would I not reply?" followed by no reply is just another meaningless conversation. You will not find closure standing in front of a brick wall.)

May the next person you love be generous with words. May the next one know that it is okay to say the words that perhaps may hurt, with the knowledge that there is a balance - as words hurt so too do words heal. May the next one never hold back either of both. 



Four

Drinking, though a quick fix, will not help you heal. Do not clutch at bottles for salvation. Find healthy ways to cope with your pain. Pain, too, is a blessing. Do not seek numbness. Do not prolong the suffering by wishing it away. Instead, go through your motions until the feeling passes. Be present in all moments and learn fully from each and every one. Let them teach you, change you and shape you. This is all a part of your story. All a part of your journey. Do not skim through the pages and except to gather meaning.

Spend time with your friends - they are great friends. You have fewer than you possibly ever had, but you have more than enough. They are each far more valuable than any friend you have lost. They have been an incredible support group. Do not push them away. 

Now, in particular, people will emerge from the molding and be there for you in ways which will surprise you. Let them be there for you. Let them comfort you. Remember. Return the favour. 

Be with your family, as often and in as many meaningful ways as you can. Call your mother. Call your father. Call your brothers. Call your grandparents. Remember that there are people who will love you unconditionally, and will not decide to quit on you via a whatsapp one-liner. These relationships are perennial; choose these over the ephemeral. Be present. 



Five

You are enough. You were Queen before him, and you shall be continue to be Queen after him. You have enough to rule without him. You can be Queen of your own lands, without needing him by your side. Be Queen enough to not need a King (or a joker pretending to be a King, but no shade). 

Do not question your worth. 

You may be as bad at communication as he says you are, among other flaws you no doubt possess. You may have done a lot of things wrong.

But you, you are human. 

You are flawed, but you are not unworthy of love.

You are also amazing, beautiful, smart, funny, thoughtful, loving. 

You are worthy of love. 

Do not forget.



Six

This too shall pass.

For nothing lasts forever, and life is short. 

You will not suffer forever. 

In the end, it will be okay. 

Therapy take two

Tentative title. Another attempt at therapy. I will heal, even if it is the last thing I do. I have decided to dedicate to healing. In the same way I decided to love you in that way that writers do - with too much drama, too little denouement. I have decided to let go, opening one finger at a time and turning my palms upwards. I will heal and receive. And this is the way I will go about it. I will write you into the past until I will only be able to find you scratched into yellowed pages with faded ink, nostalgia my friend and a heart that is whole.


This is not my choice. This is your choice. This is the option you left me with.


I am stripping myself down, layer by layer. I am laying myself bare. I am writing naked. This must be some kind of poetic justice, I suppose. Writing naked. Just like I let you see me.

I stripped myself bare, crawled out of my clothes and laid myself before you, in nothing but skin and insecurities. I loved you naked, the way I used to love my words naked. The way I try to love my words naked again. I loved you like a good poem.

And you loved me like a good past-time.


Two hundred and ninety eight days a relationship.

Two hundred and ninety eight days.

Two hundred and ninety eight reasons to be torn up.

Two hundred and ninety eight fractured memories.

Two hundred and ninety eight hollow feelings in my stomach.


I try not to regret. I do not want two hundred and ninety eight regrets. 


But, maybe, just maybe, we should have stayed convenient fuck buddies. You should have used my body and left my heart alone. I should have never gotten attached. I should have left room for the inevitable - left room to wiggle out when the earth caved in on me. I should have left you alone - me, with the reverse Midas touch; you, our relationship... maybe merely fools gold... and so me, the fool - and not turned everything to shit.


Today, one of my greatest friends taught me an important lesson with her experience - and her blogpost - today. The lesson was that some people are roots, and some are branches. The roots take hold and stick around during the rain and the snow. The branches, and the leaves, linger through the spring and the summer and are gone when it gets rough. Do you know the leaves from the roots? I didn't. But now, now I do. I know about leaves.

Forgive the cheesy play on words.

People leave.

But sometimes they don't just leave. Sometimes they quit. Sometimes they quit when you still have fight left in you. Sometimes they leave a mess behind.

I am the mess you left behind.


I am naked. And writing. I am learning to lay myself bare for myself alone. I am stripping out of my insecurities, and even my skin. I will shed this skin that you have owned for two hundred and ninety eight days, touched for three hundred and eighty two days, claimed and stained three hundred and fifty three days ago. This skin must forget three hundred and eighty nine days and counting - since this skin decided to welcome you back.

This skin has one thousand, six hundred and eighty two days of you. Or four years, seven months, one week and one day of you.

Do the math.

This skin, you will realise, has much to strip.

Count the pieces of me that I have left behind. Left with you. Cannot collect in a box at your door, with teary goodbyes and begging to be loved again.

I will not give myself again to love that opens me up and empties me out. I will hold out for the love that opens me up without emptying me out - if such a love exists.

I am naked, empty, still writing.

Naked, empty, writing and making no sense. I chose you over my words, and now they refuse to be taken back.

And you, you will not take me back.

And I, I will stop wanting you to take me back.


I will shed this skin. I will be naked. I will strip you from my skin and stop smelling you, tasting you and remembering you. I will write until my fingers bleed and my heart heals. You had no fight left, and me, I will redirect my fight and fight for myself.


Naked. Empty. Writing.

Naked. Empty. Writing.

Thursday 12 November 2015

There are some dark places that you will always return to, like homes that hide in your bones and

I've returned to this blog. I've returned to writing.

Fitting, considering I started this blog to channel a lot of post-breakup energy and get rid of those pent-up negative emotions to find some kind of closure. Fitting because since starting this blog about three years ago, with the intention of writing about breakup with boyfriend, I have gotten back together with said boyfriend and broken up with said boyfriend again.

So the prodigal son is back, and broken.

Except the prodigal son is no longer 16 and full of resentment and rage. There is no excess bitterness to mask my hurt and fuel my glo up. There's just hurt and more hurt. Fuck.

I wish, oh I wish, I could hate him with every ounce of rage in my body. Or, I wish the sky would split open and swallow me. Most, I just wish I could go back and do this over and not fuck it up. Cause, God, I fucked up the best fucking thing I had going for me. I think I deserve a round of applause for this. An ironic round of applause, at least.

Whatever.

It is day six since breakup, I think. I am not sure. Days since have been spent waking up, rolling over, looking miserably at phone, unblocking and reblocking exboyfriend, bawling, trying to sleep, ignoring the knocking at my door (except best friend K who has spare key to my room and knocks twice before letting herself in to sit at the foot of bed and try to offer encouragement and check if I have eaten - most of the time, I don't answer so I don't have to lie), crawling miserably to shower, spending a few hours in the library pretending not to want to die, returning to bed, repeat.

Mornings, by far, are the worst. I dread waking up so much that I've slipped into a place I used to frequent and don't want to visit anymore. I've started to think things like "I just don't want to wake up." Over a breakup? All the healing I've done to be dissolved with a breakup?

How long is this stage supposed to last again? Days? Weeks?

I don't have days, much less weeks. My exams are in less than a month. I need to crawl out of this hole and into the frame of mind to not fuck my exams up royally. If I don't get out of this place with a degree, how will I ever be able to run away from this town where everybody is in everybody's business? I want the degree to fold into a paper plane and soar to the farthest corner of the world I can think of--Australia, New Zealand, India?

God, are you listening? What do I do now? How do I get the closure I want, the closure the need? Is blocking him the answer? How I prevent this hurt from ever happening again? How do I learn from this? Will there be a day when we just aren't in each other's lives?

All these questions and none of the words to pray it out. Only tears. But my mother is convinced that tears are the language of the broken, and God speaks the language of the broken too. Psalms 147:3: "He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds." So, God, I give you my wounds. I give you the broken-bottle shards of a love that smashed wide open and spilled out and almost drowned me. I give you the empty parts of me. I give you all the insecurities, and the pain. I give you the wondering and the torment.

At this point, I don't know if I want to give this love thing another try. I don't want to put myself out there for somebody to have enough power over me to hurt me again. Never again will I choose a love that will not last. So help me God, may I never find this kind of love again.

I'm trying to focus on healing. Moving forward. Avoiding reckless behaviour patterns that I am notorious for with my careless ass - things like rebounding, or drunk calls/texts, dabbling with the past, torturing myself. Spending time with my friends and my family. Talking to my mommy. Glo-ing up. Things that will help speed up the healing.

But I'm still only feeling. Feeling pain, feeling hurt, feeling like shit.

And so I will write, write until the feeling passes.
"The worst thing to happen to an artist or a writer is love. It makes you comfortable, hinders your art, slows you down, distracts you. The best thing to happen is pain."
Here we go, again.

Wednesday 7 October 2015

"@scottiewaves: If you met the younger you, what advice would you give. . ."


  • Drink water. Drink lots of water.
  • Don't cut your hair. You think you won't miss it, but every time you do, you spend months growing it out and getting frustrated. It's just easier, trust me.
  • Have more fun. It won't kill you, your parents won't mind and you'll regret it when you're graduating high school. 
  • Skip the rebellion phase. Really. You don't like parties, you don't like staying out late with people you don't like and you really don't want to spend all that time drinking.
  • Read more obscure books. It will take you three years to read seven and a half chapters of Sophie's World, and you might appreciate starting a little earlier.
  • Write more. Write way more. You'll hate it all, but you'll be better for it.
  • Spend more Thursday afternoons in the couch with your grandpa. There will be Thursdays when the couch is empty and you will miss him so much more than you can ever imagine. 
  • Visit your grandparents as often as you can. 
  • Pick your friends wisely. If they make you feel like shit then that's the easiest way to know they need to go. You won't need them - you'll realise that fewer, more valuable friendships will be more satisfying. You'll be nineteen with barely enough friends to count on both hands and you will be happy. Believe it or not.
  • Don't be bitter. Your parents do what they think is best for you, and they will be two of the few people who will love you unconditionally (even when you cut your hair, pierce your ear, ignore their calls for three weeks, sneak the car out at eleven p.m. and come home at three a.m, spend all your money on things you can't eat and fail three courses). 
  • Don't worry about whether or not you're straight. You'll be 19 and there will be fifty different ways to say what you like, and it won't even matter. You'll be okay (even if maybe you like girls).
  • You will love, and love again. The love will be better the second time around, believe it or not.
  • Communicate better. 
  • There will be many days when you will be lonely, anxious, depressed or angry. It's okay to spend these days coping however best you can. It's okay to spend the entire day in bed. Don't worry.
  • Don't be afraid to show affection. 
  • Don't bottle shit up. Those bottles will fill up, and flow over and make a huge mess everywhere. (You will be 19, and still not know how to not do this.)
  • It's okay to let go sometimes. If it's meant for you, it'll come back somehow. Life is funny like that.
  • Cry when it hurts. And laugh when it doesn't. Submit fully to the things you feel and don't be afraid. You are a warrior and a woman, and these things make you a stronger both. 
  • Do nice things for other people. It just feels good. 
  • It's the little things. Not the big ones. You'll understand. 
  • Nothing you plan for the future will happen. And that will be okay. Trust God. The future will be fine, anyways. Better than you imagine, sometimes.
  • You will love him, and he will hurt you, and you will hurt him.... but you will love him all the same. It is possible. You'll see. Sometimes love is holding hands all the way through hell until you reach heaven (and knowing that both are temporary). 
  • Things end. That's okay.

Being 19 is scary, amazing and sometimes really confusing. Just like being any other age. Remember you are constantly growing and changing and shifting and the spaces you once drowned in will be too small. This is all okay. Everything is okay. Trust God, whatever you conceive him to be.

Sunday 17 May 2015

Hundreds of thousands of generations later,
God still punishes Eve.

            You, woman of his rib, you are doomed to love this man--
                        Destined to crave to return to that place, to that origin, to that love.
                                    You, his side, always.
He, hollow chest, empty where you are full
Love spilling over and into saucer from cup
Bleeding that love for him, redder than juice of berry and
            sweeter than forbidden fruit.
And still, you—you are not enough.
You wanted fruit.
He wanted more.
            More than you, more than this love, more than this flesh offered to him
            Laid bare upon the earth, naked flesh
            Beating, breathing, living sacrifice is not enough.
You should not have eaten the flesh of the fruit
But since, he has consumed the sweeter flesh yet—
And your love far easier obtained.
Sweeter still he seeks.
You just wanted to seduce his hedonism;
                        please this man
            Come, eat, share with me.
            And you, punished twice for sharing.

You, Eve
God has given you shame
And dress to cover your shame
And pain to know that it is not enough to be 
sorry
                        Nor is it enough to be in love



k.j.

Saturday 25 April 2015

On dating a Med Student (or On Being a MedLaw Power Couple, Ironically Titled)

Haven't decided if this is a freeverse, a prose poem or.... well, anything really. But here goes. Dedicated to my favourite med student, who was my favourite before he became a med student too. 


Seventy and 
      don't date a med student because they will forget the date of your anniversary but
You remember how many times my heart beats a minute.
lub dub, lub dub

The human heart is roughly the size of a f i s t 
      but you're the lover, I'm the fighter so maybe
Yours is the open palm and mine is the tight clench.
lub dub, lub dub

All the vessels in our bodies, end-to-end, would circle the earth four times
      and sometimes I think I'd like to see the whole world with you;
But laying in bed with you on a Sunday morning is almost enough adventure for the week.
lub dub, lub dub

The heart can beat independently of the body, since it has its own electrical impulse
      but separated from you and I start to tick a little slower
Like clock counterclockwise tick-tock.
lub dub, lub dub

Allegedly, two heartbeats in close proximity will begin to mimic each other 
      I pick up your habits like the scattered socks on your floor (we've started to sound like)
My heart answers yours like a phone call.
lub dub, lub dub

And then you kiss me; here, there, everywhere
      I miss a heartbeat.
You, always you.
lub-... lub dub.


Don't date a medical student because they will forget the date of your anniversary, but remember how many times your heart beats a minute and I don't know how that somehow ended up being romantic.

Friday 6 February 2015

A few of my favourite things

Blankets and nude nail polish and knob earrings and shoes with bows and polka dots and purple and donuts with sprinkles and gummy bears and hugs when you're sad and playing outside after it rains and cuddles when you're sleepy and how Popsicles cool you down on a hot day and when your friends make you laugh til your sides hurt and late night walks and doing well on tests you barely studied for and being understood and a good poem and a nice book and bubble baths and how you make me feel.