301117

I was thinking to myself, I don’t think I’ve ever liked someone this much before. Or maybe a better way to put it: I don’t think I’ve liked someone in this way before. I could not survive without seeing my partner for more than 2 weeks last time. So I don’t like it when my friends tell me, “you should chill,” or “you know over time, guys will like you less.” I think it’s ridiculous. I think giving this sort of advice implies that I don’t know what I’m doing, or that I’m not doing it right. I feel like they’re not giving me permission to be myself, to give it my all and crash and crumble. I think I’m trying my best when I give. I hate it when advices are didactic because I think there’s no formula, there’s more than one way to do things. If I have to choose between my relationships and their relationships, I’ll choose mine any day. So I’ll deal with whatever happens later, and now I just want to be myself. I’ll take what I can take, I’ll give what I can give. I’ll learn whatever it is that I need to learn. My goal is to learn from this relationship, not to try to end up forever in his arms. I think they got the wrong impression, but I can’t be bothered.

-

I realized that when you give rage some time, it evaporates. My state returns to the neutral state, it’s how homeostasis works. I am no longer mad at my friends. I think I understand where they were coming from. It’s acceptance that I need some working on, but before that I need a little bit of forgiveness from myself. Everyday. Today, I forgive myself for this.

211017

I think what I really crave, in life, is really a sense of lightness. To carry with me almost nothing at all, but myself. Move around, see the world. But recently I don’t know what it is that I’m carrying… my steps have ceased to be as light as before. Is it because of us? I think recently, I do a much better job at being alone. My actions have little consequences on other people, and vice versa. I jump lightly from one shelter to another. Before I realize that well, one is that apparently this little consequence can loom into a bigger one - people still get hurt, people still cast their revenge, two is that, there is this innate pull in me that tells me, not that my time is up, but that I want to slow, or even settle down.

I am trying to be at peace with myself, something that you do so effortlessly. This initial sense of admiration quickly assumes that form of an ugly envy, something that I detest so much. Why am I not like that, with such an exemplary form in front of me, you who excel at just being, this realization echoes even louder with you in front of me, it offends me unwittingly. It’s a new battle in my mind, but I think I have to just let it run its course. I need to forgive myself, every day. I need to give myself space, and time. I need to believe that loosening up one’s grip is not a sign of neglect, nor a lack of love, nor a symptom of oblivion. You said, “Be Yourself” - and for a while I thought that it was such an empty consolation, carrying no weight. But with it, it also implies: Take all the time you need, there is no rush, there is no deadline, it is ok. I haven’t had anyone tell that to my face in a very long time, and that comforts me a little.

211017

I’m thinking, I love my mom, if anything else fails, there’s still my mom. Reading Ferrante’s book, i feel some idea of consistency sown into me - the constant thing for me is the rollercoaster. One moment I feel clear and calm, another I burst into the most extreme human emotion in private. I feel like, maybe this is how I live my life, I don’t know. I think I’m lacking the objectivity, I don’t know myself, I feel lost. Maybe I need to be guided, maybe I’m better left alone because I’ll exhaust those who try to guide me. In my head there are voices like Elena’s, and I know why people love her so much, in the expansive account of her interior dialogue there must be your own voices too, you don’t know which is whose. Almost mimicking how Lila has impregnated her with her voices too. Voices that have this capability, I think are among the strongest. There are very few quotable passages, the writing is good at best, the books’ strength I think is the voices they present and they conjure on your own, in your own mind.

151017

When you think about it, we are kind of like machines. But instead of codes, our scripts consist of habits and unmanifested intentions. Once in a while, something goes amiss: We skip a day, we unravel years of habit-building. One mistake is all it takes. Maintenance won’t kill you, but we downplay the sheer amount of effort to carry on. Death, on the other hand, is easy. Anyone can do it. Staying alive is not. You have to have enough to eat. You have to sleep. You have to look at where you’re going in case there’s a car or a train or a coconut falling or a shark when you’re swimming. But most of us don’t end up taking our own lives, we look right and left when we cross the road - even when we know how unbearable life can get - even when we say to ourselves - enough - no more - why? Why is our willpower to live so powerful? How do we end up clinging hard to this life that we never ask for in the first place?

130917

I hope I’m not choosing ignorance when I slowly embrace the idea that sometimes… it gets tiring and the end justifies the means. Whatever works, man.

120917

The thing about habit is that… people make it seem like the easiest thing in the world. “Oh, he’s such a sports person.” “Oh, I can never do that.” “Oh, you’re so positive.” But we forget that people can get used to anything, even killing. Circumstances are what make us. To these circumstances there are a million ways to react, a million ways to go wrong.

Automation is what allows us to get most things right: Every time you scan an item in the supermarket, you lift the the scanner, you scan the barcode, you put it in your bag, you swipe your card. This is the right thing to do, and you do it and a lot of other things without thinking, you do it so many times you forget there are actually many ways for things to go wrong. The scanner is spoiled. The barcode label is missing. The bag is torn. You forget to bring your card. But the 99% of the time you get it right, or almost right, you take this small victory for granted and you let the 1% get into your head. There are less than a million ways to be slightly wrong, and to decide for some adjustments along the way.

People like to think of themselves as finished products, moulded decades ago, impossibly unmalleable. But we are capable of being moved. We do this fine-tuning every day, which seems like exactly the same thing hammered into our head, day in, day out. Days pass, then months, then years. Nothing happens. But when you look back, you almost can’t believe what sort of person you were back then. You realize that, you like to surprise yourself sometimes.

021016

“You seem like you know what you want.”

But the thing is sometimes we become things that we do not want.

“Do you think you know yourself very well?” He submerged half of his face, strong lines edging and framing it to separate him from the rest of the world, the backdrop for his presence. I was thinking I want to remember this face. A brief, contemplative silence was followed by him shaking his head, moving the waters surrounding him.

Eight months later, he said, “When I am hesitating it is not good.” He does not know himself very well but there are some things about himself that he claims to know very well, with the level certainty that is probably forever out of my reach. One day before I said, “I think it’s good to be skeptical.” When I have doubts I feel good because I am more aware of the possible shortfalls and work my way slowly to prevent or solve them.

Opposites attract. It’s just that at some point in time, one is bound to be more attracted to the other.

160517

I think it’s so easy to tell when something is fake. I thought not everything natural is better, but when it comes to writing, that ‘natural’ feel is important, it is everything. Or maybe it isn’t exactly natural, maybe it’s the fruit of labor, maybe we don’t see what we’re supposed to see.

Today is hard for me, and it is harder to think that my shortcomings are nothing compared to other people’s, and I often unintentionally compare. Sometimes at times like these I am led to believe that I am simply predisposed to gloom, maybe doomed to be doomed.

But I also know that there is no limit to my high, and I know that this is temporary, that it’s ok, a lot of people don’t get what they want. You’re not supposed to get everything you want. Life is not supposed to be easy.

Because when I look at it, always it’s this kind of moment that wakes me up to my senses. Sometimes it’s too late, but there’s no other way. And I haven’t hit the backspace button (save for a few spelling errors due to slippery, feverish typing) for quite a while so I know it must be true.

080417

Where I came from, it was easy to dream. What is thoughtfulness? Thoughts were spewed out thoughtlessly, we didn’t think it could work any other way. We let them roam free, assuming positions where our bodies couldn’t go. No corner was too little or too tricky for our thoughts to occupy. Like air, they left no trace while dancing in the vacuum, penetrating the silence. It was always lukewarm. Each moment liberated with newness, stamped differently from one second to the next.

When I think about this kind of warmth, I miss it. I don’t remember when exactly it happened, but it started happening. A transition is hard to make out of the gray area, although on the spectrum it’s the only color other than black and white. I don’t remember, but I know it must have started somewhere, the process. It was when feelings turned into a dirty word, because it’s primitive, it involves the reptilian part of your brain, everybody can do it. Since when did everyone want to be special? On average, we are so mediocre.

What do I think of freedom, I value it so much. But it doesn’t stir me away from having the desire to belong, desire to possess and when it comes to human connections, it means being possessed too. I want depth. Breadth seems more practical, useful, beneficial, but in long term I know the waters I have to wade through are gonna be deep. I am going for a dive, Mom. When the stream of consciousness washes ashore, I don’t want to spend my whole hours staring at the sun taking a pastel pink plunge, before rising out of the horizon in all its blue, glorious. You look at the sunset already worrying that you’ll miss the sunrise.

homeostasis

I don't feel so good. My work consists of sometimes hopping from one place to another - events, meetings. I skipped an event today, and I feel bad. I am outside the building typing this out. Why do I feel bad? Because I think this is running from my responsibility. Deep down, I still think I haven't done enough. I'm still struggling with this. I hope by being aware of it I'm one step closer to peace. I need a constant reminder that it's okay. Am I always like this? I don't think so... I think this is one of those rough patches in my life, it colors life vivid.

I'm still a bit dazed from two bottles of wine last night. I don't sleep very well recently. Something is bothering me - I have a rough idea, but I don't know what to do with it. I think I'm still not very good with uncertainty. But I have this idea, that my turbulence will stabilize as it goes through this process of homeostasis. So I let go of the need to feel stable now. Right now, I think to myself, take all the time you need. You have all the time in the world. At the same time, all you have is now. Now is when I'm typing this out. Now is when the gentle breeze blows, now is a quiet morning when the sun is shining before it rains again later. Now is 9:40 am, November 30th. I don't have to think of it with a context. I don't have to think, oh, 2017 is ending. Because time is just a string of nows. And if I don't feel so bad now - I would rate my mood now as +1 - if I can still breathe well, I am still able to complete a coherent thought, well, it's not so bad, isn't it? I think it's good to be here now.

homecoming

Hello, hi, it's been a while. I abandoned this space because I thought I didn't have time to write. But well, I stil did write, just not here. I was writing another entry when I discovered my writing from May 11, which means, it was Days Before I Met Him. And I understood that version of me, but I thought it was so cryptic. I think I used to write that way, either to protect myself or to abstracize my thoughts in an attempt to sound like I am more enlightened than the rest. But no more. It's time to bare it all. I like some quality that I could find in my writing those days, but for me now to write is to heal, not to produce good pieces. Especially since I have my safe space here. My colleague was saying to me yesterday, "I mean, what are you doing here in sales? I think you should do more... philosophy, literature, I don't know. Do something that you are good at."

I'm a generalist now. I used to think that it's a problem, to not be especially good at one thing, to have breadth but not depth. To not possess mastery. But I thought, fuck it, life is long. At this point in time the worst thing I could do is to be hard on myself. Because if I'm losing me, whom do I have? I know that time is limited and one day I'll get old and I might look back one day and think, oh, I wish I could've done more. Heck, my life used to depend on this single principle. But I think enough is enough. I forgive myself for being tired, even if people think I haven't done enough. There will always be more. I think the most important thing right now is to just be kind. How to be both - to unleash your fullest potential and still be kind to yourself? I think there is more than one way. And I'm learning it now.