Perfer et Obdura....

The thing is, I forget that I'm my own hero.

I kept falling and kept having to eventually -after the period of laughing at myself while down - pick myself up again each time. Even if I got hurt, I had to heal. But somehow the very fact that I was always my own doctor cut open a wound of itself. A wound that maybe was always there for various traumatic reasons, but it widened and became more raw and festering each time I healed myself. I feel it right now; sometimes it is deep, deep inside, sometimes it's the very physical ache in my bones, or the way my chest tightens in a pain that is like having a metal vise around me. But the wound is always there.

Even still, I realize now that subconsciously I feel that the girl I was in the past was weaker and today somehow I am stronger to her. Maybe simply because I have endured this wound to date, and the latent knowledge of everything I have gone through has made me therefore better equipped by the very fact of existence. 

But the funniest thing is that today I went back in time. And all of a sudden I was looking at this beautiful, happy, cheerful, positive, and err, cheesy bundle of joy -- and she was me. She was me.

But I look at that me: I was so happy. And yet that was a time in my life when I literally had nothing.

And I wonder, who was this girl who had so much courage? Was she really so brave, so hopeful? -- Or was she delusional?

I mean, this was right at the edge of a period where I was in a pit so deep and dark, it wasn't even a pit anymore. I was buried under the fragments of my life, and it was as if all the physical world was the burden of rubble atop me. I had nothing and no one. But I had myself.

I still had myself. And I dug out. I climbed out. Suffocating. Blind. Reincarnated. I lived again.

But being myself meant that I was the me that still had that everlasting wound. That wound was me. It festered in my old life, and it threw me into freefall.

Yet it also taught me to fly.

Today I find it so much harder to be that brave girl who could be so happy in the darkest of times. The irony is that I am not alone in the personal sense and yet in this knowledge I am so much more. 

When I was in high-school, my motto was staunchly 'expectation is the cause of disappointment'. This was my internal warning  to prevent any collision. Yet being human, how it could it have ever be prevented except in a vacuum? In university, the dude who eventually became my best friend told me that for the first year before our actual mutual acquaintancy, he had this certain impression of me because of the way I did what I had to do without any nonsense - studied, classed, worked out, socialized politely yet aloofly - and that I was some kickass tough girl. But really I was just trying hard not to give a damn lest I get hurt (again). But of course, I gave a damn.

Do I regret it? I'm not sure I do. In fact, I'm pretty damn sure I don't. I've gone through so many cycles of heartbreak and despair that counting is just nonviable. In each of these experiences the crux is not what I've learnt from them, but rather what I have learnt of myself.

Just for some context, right now my heart is broken over giving a damn - a bit too much of a damn - over someone who says they also do but their actions and words signify otherwise. To be honest, it actually is not their fault - yet it is.

But this time, I'm not going to let my heartbreak break me, or even define me. It's a tough battle because I want them to see and understand that I am not alright: that I am hurting and I am hurting because of them. And yet, I want to be strong - and if that is what they see they will find some solace in knowing that despite their actions and their behaviour, it's OK, that I am and will be OK.

But you know what? It's not OK. I'm not OK.  However, a person who actually cares will know, or make an effort to really know, even if I seem OK. 

I look back at the happy girl I was, even when I was the saddest girl inside, and it's me who really knows. 

So dudes and dudettes, there is no holding back. I am my own hero. 

All I have to do is look back at who I was and I inspire myself, to continue to be inspiring to the girl I will be.

Because I am my own hero.

Grief

What do you do when the one you thought was your lifelong companion forsakes you? Had swept away without a backward glance, dropping you like a fragile glass to smash into infinites shards, and in leaving you behind, trods upon everything that once was: hope, honour, dignity, consolation, love.

When you are left with echoes of your own voice calling and calling them, only to return to you empty and cold...what do you do?

When this love that once filled every thing so much that gold could not outweigh its riches, why now do I feel like a homeless begger sitting on the street, craving, hungry and thirsty for one ounce of your notice?

Originally posted on my private personal blog on Friday, 21 August 2015. Re-posted with my own heart's permission. 

Si vis pacem, para bellum

Like most people, there are two sides of me, generally speaking. The nice side and the not-so-nice.  The ideal is usually to remain on the path of goodness, therefore the 'nice side' is what we should strive for. Kindness, forgiveness, altruism.

But what if we're wrong?

We've got this 'bad angel' and 'good angel' on either of our shoulders respectively, guiding us to good or goading us to evil. And we assume the good is telling us to be self-effacing and turn the other cheek. But really, what if we've all got it mixed up?

Suppose being good was really a device of the devil - to make us weak, reliant on others through our dependency of our good acts toward them. What if each time we hold a door open for another creature, the army of 'good angels' are groaning, because they know that we are succumbing to the manipulations of a very well-executed plan of action by the spawn of hell.

What if the good angel is the one actually telling us to not move over and give your seat to the next dude, and is telling us to just tell the fellow to fecking find another seat because there are lots of them all over the damn bus? Because we got to put our feet down and do unto others as we ought to because everyone is goddamn different.

I'm not even going to elaborate. I'm just going to leave this here to chew on.

Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris

We love to be miserable. Not really: we actually tell each other, and ourselves, it's miserable being miserable, but that's the point: we're only adding to that state of what we love.

Misery, melancholy, sadness, tragedy - why is it so much more meaningful to us to be within these states of minds, as opposed to being happy or fine or just in a good mood? The latter are so much more transient and we acknowledge that they aren't likely to last before the former comes back. And yet, it is our self-professed ambition to achieve the latter.

But really, we kinda revel in being miserable. It's a channel of its own where we can express whatever negative energies in an act that is actually an expenditure. Through the act of synthesizing these energies we achieve paradise through catharsis.

If we don't have this up and down motion, we don't feel like we're moving. The dynamics of emotion remind us that we are alive.

Selfie Improvements

Lately we've become all the more preoccupied by the superficial. So much that we've sort of lost touch with who we really are. Sure, there are all the more articles, slideshows, and hey, blogs, devoted toward the proliferating topic of self-improvements,  but this too has only been a contributing factor to our loss of identity.

We are surfing upon the surface of survival - and one tactic of this is to avoid delving too deep lest we are not able to resurface. Our musculature has atrophied in the process, not exercised in the processes of the act. Similarly our synapses, our neurons has not been taxed with the red-zone activity of 'over-thinking'.

The process of self-development is sadly undermined now by the advancement of our identity as demanded by society and culture, furthermore infiltrated into our very subconscious by technology.

We devote more time to creating the 'perfect' selfie - and not for individual purposes: the whole point of taking selfies is to publish on various social media instrumental in putting forward ourselves as a subject for interpretation by society. And it is on this very basis that we recalibrate our very image of ourselves in our eyes.

Is it any wonder that we're now a collection of instability? Teetering on the edge of tools which could take us forward if used correctly, these same tools are those which will make or break us. But we're more likely to break; and are in the process of breaking. There are cracks around the mirrors that we try to cover up with snapshots of better created artifices, or smooth over with anti-wrinkling ointments (or better yet, photoshop). But at the same time, we have this internal struggle to reconcile the person we might actually be inside to the person we try to be as demanded by external expectations.  We assimilate these expectations so much into our very psyche that they have superimposed upon our original ideas of identity.

Our self-esteem is tenuous. Even those of us who aver we don't give a rat's tail about what society thinks of us are not immune. The toughest facade really has grown so due to necessity. The way a person blinks at us, or smiles at us, or walks past us without another glance makes something underneath, even insubstantial or subconsciously, quiver. When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we see what needs improvement or what is to be admired after improvements and through other people's eyes. Underneath this skin, we don't really know who we are.

Sorrows of Stagnation

I dread that sensation of waking up with that deeply rooted sense of dread. And it usually happens when the days have settled into mundane routine. When the new things have lost their shine and the permeated odour of freshness has become stale.

Things have sucked for a long time, and as you can probably tell, I refuse to let them remain so. I mean, things can suck in context, but I am determined to let my perception similarly cloud and distort. If things aren't new, maybe I just gotta infuse that newness into the day myself. Even if I have to kickbox it in.

Vemödalen

Why spend money on botox and also spend money on eradicating household pests - just get yourself bitten by a spider on your goddamn lips already.

Why feast like a glutton on junk food and more calories than is needed per meal and also spend on gym membership?

Why poison yourself with tonnes of chemicals - pesticides, preservatives  - only to have to spend just as much, and more, on more chemicals - prescriptions, pharmaceuticals - to counteract the effects.

I find myself perplexed by the ignominious state we have deluded ourselves into as a species. We waste so much. We buy into this whole practice of what makes us this modernized society and yet, we have in the very same process sold ourselves short. 

Once it was money that really demarcated the disparity in class heirarchy. Either you had way too much or you had none, and if you were in between - which most of us were - you still compared your dollar to your neighbour and resented or gloated. To truly and honestly not care about the weight of a dollar you had to either have too much or none. 

Now, it's technology that  becomes a telling identifier. It has, by the same means of furthering our society as a whole in the name of progress, simultaneously dumbified its individuals.

We don't think anymore. Like really think. Now computers think for us. We just take what we are given and recycle-reuse-reduce it even further. We repackage what has trickled down to us through osmosis, and wait for our recognition and praise for doing so.

Maybe technology only heightens this; maybe we've always done this, and are no more than glorified hairless monkeys that only do as we see. Maybe imitation is all we are capable of, and to rise above is an escape from a cycle of the mundane to a state of intellectual nirvana. We've invented this thing, and patted our own backs, but at the same time we collude at the other corner of the room to send us right back to where we began. 

We've become so less efficient and so bloody lazy.  We've become hostages to our own lack of will-power. Slaves to those seven masters - wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony - who we thought that by just identifying and recognizing them as enemies on the radar we preempted their subcutaneous encroachment into our psyches - and fail to in spades by the consequential lax state of awareness without the diligent vigilance warranted. The smallest dose has already made us too lazy and too unconcerned to make the effort to repair ourselves.

We have the potentiality to go far but we won't. We won't really make a long-lasting flavour of gum because then our buyers won't buy more. We won't create a  tungsten filament that won't break because then our bulbs won't sell as fast. And it's not just at the top. We won't let ourselves have a dollar more because then we won't get social assistance. We're OK with being down there if we just have to work a little less and get smaller income if it means the taxpayers will provide the rest. And we won't create a cure for cancer because, hey then who will buy our medicines and who will pay us doctors for our services? Let's all remain sick! It's okay! We can buy an iPhone that will tell us how to fix our symptoms.

Peripeteia

Yesterday I had a conversation with one of my oldest friends that lasted way into the early hours - way past my usual bedtime anyway.

This is one of my friends who fall into that special category wherein you can not talk/communicate for a lengthy period of time and yet when you do connect, there are no hangups - no recriminations about why didn't you stay in touch, I won't talk to you if you don't, etc. - and it's as if that long period of radio silence had never existed.

Coming after my last post, it seems sort of like I have no idea what I'm talking about. Having no one, being nobody vs. having these kind of friends who know that there is absolutely no chance of being taken for granted, either way of the relationship. But strangely, it's all the same. 

One topic we went over was the corroded mental states we both were experiencing; both similarly disparaged and yet both on two different sides of a coin. One, the state of perpetual loneliness and the aching void that remains yet unfulfilled despite the growing residual feeling of yearning. The other, the agonies of being in a relationship that seems to be fracturing with a multitude of deeply felt problems.  And somehow in the meeting of minds we realized the commonality that there is never a meadow of permanent happiness (chorus: the grass is greener...). 

Happiness is so fleeting. And it is thus because we have made it so. Fleeting indicates the passage of time. And in this day and age everything is so temporally dependent. Time is money etc., etc. But what if we had the ability to live forever? We wouldn't have this embedded calendar of time ticking away, of the grains of sand depleting, of racing to accomplish x number of things by x units of time. Perhaps we would have no need for happiness; contentment would be king. (Or queen, if you prefer.)

If I lived forever, I would know that I had a tomorrow. I would have a tomorrow to wait for if today it could not happen. I could wait for love forever, because there would be no ending in loneliness. And I would have no end of patience. And patience is that which we all need a whole whopping load of.

I can feel my heartbeat slow down, my very breaths calm at the very thought of taking things slowly, at the idea of a forever forever. And yet, why can't I apply the ideal to our specimen of mortality?

Why am I building up these walls of bricks made of instances of time, effectively barricading myself into a cube of claustrophobia? Why am I resenting everything around me with my own conceived and self-constructed perceptions? I don't know. It is like shooting myself in the foot. Then shooting myself in the foot. Then shooting myself in the foot. And blaming everything else that brought me to that moment; without realizing maybe there is something I can be doing differently.  

Again, I don't know. But I've promised myself to put my energies into something productive, and not let them fester and become infected. Maybe if I think hard enough I will discover the way to foreverhood.

Elusive

Those who know me will recognize that I can tend to be elusive - a ghost - for the very purpose of not being known.

There are periods, therefore, where I will be less communicative; I will less likely be around. My absence can indicate some sort of cognitive clouding, a pulling away from opportunities to express what is on my mind, a retraction into myself due to some person disassociation.

Yes, it is true. I, like most people perhaps, attempt to hide my sadness. Whereas I have long dreamt and wished for the fulfillment of having another being to completely satisfy an innate yearning of empathy and compassion, I have simultaneously refrained from opening up as a form of self-preservation.

In the instances where I have mistakenly believed that I had found such a person, my tendency toward self-preservation had been further strengthened by the act of disillusionment; broken trust, a broken heart, the irreparable damage of being left behind, and perhaps somehow worse, the cold apathy experienced in a state of emotional vulnerability.

It is interesting to consider how more generally inclined our psyches are to holding compassion, patience and kindness toward those visibly impaired, whether it be psychological or physical disability. Anecdotal evidence rather proves this. However, why is it that when another being, not so as aforesaid disabled, experiences sorrow, suffering, and general weakness of spirit and mind, our threshold to compassion is so different. The latter soon becomes an emotional liability; to put it simply, putting up with their suffering becomes a pain in the ass.

I am as guilty of this as the next person. I will have been found to have sighed in exasperation and said, 'Get over it, already!' You know you have. But where is the line? That which differentiates a petty bout of complaints versus a long-standing promise to be there, no matter what?

For said reason maybe I hesitate at being that burden. The funny thing is, I have a chronic psychological phobia of being left behind by someone I have invested emotionally in -left behind not just in the physical act, but being displaced cognitively - and yet once I have opened up, that's it, that person's capacity to deal with this not-so-strong, not-so-independent girl evaporates. Catch-22, in a way.

The list of these experiences is longer than anyone could ever know, longer than could be known by even the one person in whom I placed everything, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, personally, on the basis that finally I found the elusive soulmate.

But maybe it's not just elusive. Maybe it just does not exist.

Right now I am broken and still breaking. And I admit this, the girl who would rather die before admit this. But I am already a ghost - unseen, unattended, invisible- after all. 

Fu...d

Eight days into September, I have to slap myself each time I reach for a snack.

Most people, according to folklore, put on the weight in December. Apparently, that's when all the Christmas treats start sprouting, baskets of red and green aluminum-wrapped, snowflake-spangled, silver-lined chocolates become omnipresent, and face-stuffing becomes a form of seasonal substance-abuse. 

I'm..ehhh...not so much a fan of sugary treats. Sure, I relish the occasional chocolate or slice of cake as much as the next dude. But, something about sugary things kind of makes me internally cringe. I don't know what it is; I often get nausea just contemplating a super sweet bite. My teeth hurt. My tongue feels gross. Maybe I'm a Superwoman and sugar is my kryptonite. Yeah, I'm from the planet Glucon/ite, yo. 

Now, give me salty kinda snacks. Did someone say kryptonite? Chips, nachos, popcorn, samosas (SAMOSAAA), fries... Hello, weakness.

I love potatoes. I love pizza. I know, I know: who doesn't?And honestly, for the most part, as those of you who know me will already know, I usually eat pretty healthfully. Like, saladdddddd! Oh yes, that's my other weakness, but that's another story for another day. 

Now. The month of August is my month of shame. As it culminates in the greatest event of humankind in the history of the universe, i.e. MY BIRTHDAY.. Ahem, thank you autocorrect thingy for putting that in capitals. Goes to show how universal that truth is. ... I tend to develop a subconscious tendency toward snacking...profligately. Truly and admittedly, it is a shame.

I try to rationalize the month away by asserting that it was just an experiment to observe the effects of eating food from outside sources daily. In full-disclosure, the girls at each foodstop location knew my order by rote, just at the very sight of me. And in fuller disclosure I evilly tried tripping them up by deciding to change things up and going with different choices. I still got a smiley face drawn on my coffee cup, and still got called love/hun/darling..at least to my face. But to the point, I ate out every single day for a month..

And I'm squidgy. Wth! My abs are gone. My triceps are squishy soft. My thighs!...well thank the Force for stretchable denim.

Even though this wasn't really an experiment, I still have results that tell me that this fastfooding thing sucks. I don't even know what my arteries look like. On second thought, maybe I don't want to know. But now that my month has come ans gone, that's it. No more.

Time to get back in my Superwoman lycra...