Connection

It’s hard to fathom the reality of things at a place where clarity isn’t the virtue. While definitive answers, being extreme as they are, stop the mind from wandering down the dangerous path of what-ifs, being left without one isn’t as big of a curse as I had once imagine it to be. 

Am I being truthful in saying that I don’t have the answer to some of the questions I’ve been plagued with since that night? (It’s excruciating to even attempt putting a name to what it was, which maybe why questions crawl through my mind with such savage rage.) Albeit the pain that I’d like to think I’ve suffered, I’d be lying if I say I don’t know why I’ve been in the same gloomy, blue state for the past couple of months. 

What wonder is the connection between everything in this world? Be it human interactions, chemical bonds, food chains, or economical relations, we can’t escape inter-connectivity. Not our persons, not the atoms in our physical forms, not the way we perceive the world and consume the world.

Memory is a tricky thing. Even though I’ve thought time and time again that, my memory has been compromised by my own choosing of intoxication, certain things that I’ve thought slipped out of my perception, will still resurface in my memory. Like a disease that you don’t remember contracting, but the consequence will still scorch your body, reminding you of the ravenous nature of its being. 

Maybe it is a blessing after all that, as a human being with a functional memory, I don’t get to forget the people who’ve influenced me and touched me and connected with me. I will forever remember that little gesture, that playful wink, that illuminating conversation, even in the darkest of night, or in the brightest of day. 

And of course, the emotions attached to such connection, the pain or the joy, eventually find its way back to me, after moments, days, or years after it had happened. 

I guess I’d rather… not remember as well as I do now.

Irritation

Children have the power of curiosity. So they take things apart, and make discoveries along the way.

It almost feels as if I had more clarity as a child, because of that power, those curiosity-driven journeys.

At least I understood myself.


I wasn't afraid.

I mean, at least I didn't think I would be afraid of breaking myself down to be enlightened. Not until when I did break down.

And as that process of stitching myself together goes on, I couldn't help but feel a little... irritated.

It wasn't that the whole thing took me by such surprise, that it killed me and left me in the dark. It wasn't that I hated myself for wallowing in the well of shame and embarrassment.

I am irritated because of how much I've made it about you.

If only shaking my head could somehow shake all my thoughts into the right order. I do know one thing though. It was always about you. How you felt; how you thought.

I've wanted you so badly. Yet, because of your own insecurities and your own demons, you pushed me away with your unnecessary shield; and you, vulnerable and paranoid, hiding behind the shadow.

Be mine?

I asked. You smiled, and turned away.

It slices. The words you threw at me. Scolding me for perfectly logical things that I should have never apologized for.

You were never brave enough to claim me anyways. So why pretend that it meant something, that my mingling with other free souls somewhat violated rules that we never made up?

I begged and I begged.

I did.

Even then I kept it about you.

No more.

Ruins

How do you stand within the entanglements of events and feelings, and still maintain a perfect sense of balance?

I'm quite lost in this sequence. This foggy, empty, and consuming mess.

I mean. Am I ever going to be able to take a step back and pinpoint the wrongs?



I already know.


Sex is addicting.

It lies to you and convinces you that, regardless of everything you are, in that tense arching of the back, in the quiet force of thrust, or in that moment of ecstasy, you are loved and wanted.

Lies are all titillating and alluring, it's the glossy candy to a child's heart, and it's the longing look from a passionless lover. You grasp in a knuckle-buldging manner, hurting from the sharpness of your nails, yet it escapes, reminding you of its nature.

Lies are empty. Useless. Detrimental.

The sweetness eventually vanishes, leaving a bad taste in your mouth; and the lover at long last looks away, mocking your acceptance.

I'm living a lie.

And that lie, though passive and sublime, is ever the same as any other.

It tramples. It ruins. It steps on the last bit of hope for happiness and then I can see who I am.

I am a liar.

Singles

I don't like singles. Especially the way the clang against each other in your pocket as if their compiled weighty-ness doesn't already remind you of their existence. 

I don't disregard their value though; in the same way that I do not disregard single souls, lost in a sea of turmoil. 

Convince yourself of practicality. Be my guest. 

But I do want to suggest that, maybe fate/karma has already made a visit to your mind creeping through the back door. 

I call it being "spiritual but not religious" and states my practicality that way. But I'm ready to say that I'm comfortable, at least, with being by myself always, if fate so decides. 

Chances can be numbers, irrational and illogical. 

But I stand at this point and say that chances are quite decided.

And I'm ready to accept mine. 

Quit

I'm trying to quit smoking.

It scares me, the feeling it creates, this viscous and short-lived aura of delusion; as if I can afford to live recklessly.

I never thought of my self as ambitious. It's a latent ambition that does not compel, but rather glares.
My ambition glares at me as I tilt my head back and draws another breath of nothingness.
It glares at me when the sequence of my favorite past eerily dissolves into incongruent pixels and frames.

I can't think of why I fell into that fountain when I was 5 anymore.

I'm slowly losing my presentness.

I can't recall the mess from last Friday.

I can't remember what I said to my mother from before I departed.

I can't smoke anymore.

Down

I am that obsessive lover.

I am that clingy type.

I am the emotional juggernaut that leaves ruins in silence.

Burn

As I ride this flying metal box soaring through territories so foreign to me, I can’t stop but look back at the day, the week, and the semester before me. As much as this post is about reflection, I still can’t quite understand people’s need for reflection. Why do we have to constantly remind ourselves what we did yesterday and spend this grief-worthy amount of time making attempts at understanding our own histories when all this generation wants is to YOLO? 

Time is a sequence, mimicking that of DNA, where segments interlock in accordance and therefore producing the sequence we came to understand as our reality. And though I don’t possess the knowledge equivalent to that of a microbiologist, I, as do many others, am still hooked on pulling this intricate sequence apart and judge the shit out of each moments and each broken phrases. We actually think we are some forensic genius who spend each living moment gathering and deciphering the mundane details of the even more mundane daily activities which we so pride ourselves in. Gag.

People like to play gods. I don’t mean having the power to alter physics or warping times; but the ability to control every aspects of life. Who said what and how they felt and who did this to whom and blah blah blah. Standing, or rather ironically, sitting in this viewpoint and peeking at my semester, it’s quite a joke how much I overanalyzed, over-interpreted, and over-planned in just a short span of four months. Regardless of how much I tell myself I am over different things that occurred, I still contemplated so very hard at grasping reality from other people’s angle. 

I can sure tell myself that, you know, I’m smart enough to let go of it. But fuck. 

Fuck.

Remember that cliche all those legends created and re-created, the saying about how we all are touched in some shape or form and are therefore impacted as seen in For Good from Wicked? Fuck that. 

I don’t dismiss it completely though. Cliches withstand the trial of time because the truth within, no matter how insignificant and overlooked, has the ability to stand as long in history as they make you believe that diamonds last forever. Fuck that, still. Because I was not just touched by Tyler in some glamorously metaphorical way, it hurt more like a burn. It was almost like that time when I thought it’d be a good idea to touch a turned on iron. What set them apart is that, with some toothpaste and “roughin-it”, the blister on my thumb eventually learnt to retreat and heal; but this one doesn’t. It does not just “take time” or can be “waited out”. 

I don’t believe the Weekend narrative where true romance can happen over a one-night-stand. I do, however, wholehearted think that this narrative should be the way love happens with the one-night-stand part being optional. It’s the true connection between two lost kids in a crowded park, that instant recognition that makes you believe things would be easier now with this new-found relationship and someone who’s always going to be confident in you no matter what. It’s the connection and recognition that just really piss me off; because I thought I found it. I thought I effortlessly, just, I don’t know, earned it? 

Maybe it was a shift in focus that I positively convinced myself of making. I was that dummy who believed in the reinvention bullshit those self-help writers churned out in some grim self-help-books factories.

Damn.

Reinvention doesn’t happen according to your will! Most of the time you recognize change in yourself because somehow you were touched and it impacted you so much you took time off from looking at your face and those ever-present zits. It impacted you so much so that even you sense the change. It’s a gradual process no college-aged naive kid can just compress into a four months session, though I did believe I could. 

It doesn’t matter anymore though, whatever “coerced” me into taking that leap as I would like to tell myself.

Haha. Coercion. As if that was actually it.

Nah. It was only my over-interpreting and overanalyzing. Regardless of how untruthful Tyler was and how much of an [insert insult] he was, it was I who thought I really saw the big picture and had a feeling that it was going to turn out as I planned. That whole over-interpretation grasped my attention so intensely I swallowed my subconscious and deceiving idea of being with him down. I set up a trap followed by lies I told myself and jumped in ever so willingly.

That doesn’t obscure the utter aloneness and the deep and unbelievable loathe I had against myself in those tears I so pathetically cried. I laugh at myself though.

But above all, it was the true emotional turmoil that I underwent, which all sprang from a deception, that really irritates me and completely destroys what courage I have left in me to believe I am strong and mature. Because I was touched by a fictional and intense love I created myself from a deception. 

Fuck.