Daydream – Young Adult, Old Soul

A kinder sentiment.

Trigger warning: death ideation.

Odd and contradictory as it may be — in moments of joy and beauty, I have often found myself thinking I could die then and there. There are other times when I have wished against all reason that the moment would never end, that I be allowed to spend the rest of my mortal years in it. But inexplicably, there has also been this.

It usually happens when I am at the right distance from everything: the people in my life, my daily routine, the names I respond to and all my attachments to this world. No longer am I the name on my identity card, the colour of my eyes or even the madness of my hair. No longer am I a girl in the bus, a vision or a tangible thing. My soul instead flies like a kite into the boundless skies, and the string keeps tugging, pulling, unraveling from the spool, like a scarf endlessly lost to the wind, dancing an infinite dance.

In these moments when I am so far away that all I know are the brushstrokes of clouds, I become the feeling I am experiencing: the blueness of the sky, the golden quality of sunlight, the faint rustling of leaves… I melt and become a mere mirror of experience and sensation, an echo-room for the beauty of the world.

I’ve often mistaken this feeling as a desire for death — a longing to stop existing beyond this point, having achieved the purest form of existence.

But it is not that, the Truth in me supplies. It is a kinder, softer sentiment, a freer one.

Yes, I echo, gentle and honest like a tired child.

I do not want to die. I want, instead, to dissolve into the sky and become the material of clouds. I want to be taken apart, memory by memory, and come undone like a tangle of threads until my soul is free to join the ether.

Like foam to the sea. Dust to Dust. A breeze in the infinite sky. That is my soul, a grand mystery solved, a stuffy room now breathing with light.

It was never about dying, it was always an unbecoming, a journey back home. But there are no words for that in the common language. The closest approximation has always been ‘death‘, but it is not that.

My soul is this feeling of light. Light in both ways: weightless and honeyed, like that one spot of light that falls on your desk one afternoon and in which particles of dust or matter rise, rise, rise as if called to some greater purpose.

I do not want to die. I want to be this, I’ve caught myself thinking.

Quote of the day:

“You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!”
— Pablo Neruda, A Song of Despair

Lingerer.

I’ve earned quite the reputation of being a lingerer.

I was always caught a little too long in the warmth of morning sheets, and I took hours steaming up the shower, only to emerge, skin flushed and thoughts nebulous. Voted most likely to run into a pole while staring at the sky. Serial latecomer, eternal late bloomer.

I settle too comfortably into moments — I melt into them like candy on a summer’s day: messy, gooey and all over the place.

I can’t help it though: I’m just so in love with the idea of being. It is magic to just be. To be able to create thoughts. To move your hand just because you want to. And feelings — how deliciously complex they are! Like scents, they have undertones and influences that make them unique. But there are always the classics,too: love, sadness, fear, anger. And how intriguing to have a place for your thoughts, for your dreams, for every unspoken part of you. Do you realise that every idea you have first existed as a spark of electricity in your brain? All of the world’s greatest inventions and art were born in that liminal space. Inexistant to the rest of the world, to MRI scans and brain surgeons but so vivid for you.

There are worlds inside my head always calling me. The worlds I knew first.

And then, there’s the world world.

How it is both overwhelming and small at once.

The sweetness of it amid its acridity. A flower bursting from the concrete, flocks of birds flying over industrial zones, the lullaby of the ocean, minutes away from the national reserve bank.

So I linger. There is so much to take in, to admire.

A lifetime will never be enough for this purpose: there is too much out there.

The sun, the sky, the progression of the day, mountains, the rain, the unnamed stars that light up our nights. The people.

How am I expected to be on time when all these ideas orbit my head? How am I meant to just accept it all, to brush the world and myself under a carpet and pretend it’s all…normal?

It’s not.

It’s exceptional, all of it.

So I will linger, charmed by the world and its ways, entranced by the inner workings of my mind. And I will call the clock a liar for saying I’m late. Because I’m not, I’m always right on time somehow.

Note: Still alive! Very much enjoying it, too. I hope and pray you are all doing beautifully as well. Also, are you or someone you know also a lingerer? Please tell me I’m not the only one lol.

Listening to:

Mobile.

Young adult old soul magic realism simini blocker

The moon, for a moment, looked like a piece of seaglass sticking out from the sand, stricken by a straying sunbeam.

Then, I realised, isn’t it just that? Maybe the moon is nothing but a piece of glass set in the heavens, meant to catch our eye, to pacify our wild, warring thoughts as it reflects a light that is not its own.

The one who loves more.

young adult old soul magic realism writing — Art by: ohgigue

After the separation, I remember writing (very embarrassingly) that I felt home-less. I felt like I had been kicked out into the cold, into the loneliness of life, unprepared. It always happens to other people, doesn’t it? It happens because they are somehow at fault. If you do everything like you’re supposed to, you have nothing to fear.

But it’s not true.

One day, you have love in you. You share a bond with someone else that nothing could begin to explain. One day, it’s for life. The next, it isn’t anymore. And it never will be again. You find yourself having to grasp with the cold realities of the present while relearning what the truth is now. The truth that somehow, today is vastly different from yesterday and yesterday will never happen again.

I’ve journeyed a bit since then, into the cold. I stumbled upon warmth, watching as feeling seeped back into my frosty fingers, leaving behind a dark red blush.

And now, I’ve returned. To the house I had been thrown from. It is exactly as it was when I left. No wind has passed by, no leaflet has been nudged out of place. The only difference now it that it is abandoned. But when has an abandoned house been this full?

This house that was left in a hurry, left alone for the vines of Time to overtake, it still holds so many things. So many objects still hanging on the wall, so many tottering stacks of photos and drawers crammed to overflowing with mementos. There are playlists and poems, brochures for things we said we’d do together. On the desk, the half-written letter I could never finish in time lays undisturbed. Through the lens of memory, I can see myself writing it even now, stuck in mid-air — an action caught in time, frozen under its glaciers.

Every room harbours a lifetime of memories. Nothing is meaningless. There are plenty of senseless things, yes, but they all have meaning.

How can such a full house feel so empty?

I wish she had taken some things with her. I wish she’d packed some memories with her in a box labeled with her name and had driven off. But why do I have to be the one left with all of these? The burden of memories is always left to the one who loves more.

I ask myself why I am even here. To torture myself even more? To grow cold in a house engulfed in an eternal winter? Have I come to burn it down, to forget?

“Thank you.”

That is what I’ve come to say.

“Thank you for keeping me warm, for protecting me against the cold. Thank you for your time with me.”

I cannot live in this house anymore. I cannot visit it for long. But I’m happy it was there, once upon a time.

Note: So, friendships hurt huh

Listening to:

Escapist.

writing young adult old soul magic realism james fenner — Art by: James Fenner

And now, the truth I have been unwilling to admit to myself: I am escaping. Sentenced to unexciting realities, my mind cooks up elaborate scenarios, my body busies itself in all ways it can think of.

I am living for dreams that have yet to be, trading the certainty of “now” for the maybes of tomorrow. I know that no matter how much I plan, there is always so much that is left in the air, so much I cannot control. These doubts infiltrate my small, ordinary day and grow large and looming until they fill up my breathing space and the only way away from them is distraction.

Daydreaming, entertaining the idea of smoking, putting music on every time silence stretches or boredom reaches to the bottom of my soul, risking myself in brazen speech, scrolling through social media, snacking on things I don’t even want to eat, texting “people”… All things I’ve done or attempted in an effort to escape from life, actions very much like the moments when, as a child, I would plug my fingers in my ear and go “Lalalalalalalala, I can’t hear you!” at the world.

So I’ve come to abhor silence; these thoughts only echo louder in it. Instead of facing them, I fill every moment of idleness with something else. I drown out my thoughts in loud music, I forget about my troubles through conversations, I escape reality with all the swiftness of a gazelle being chased by a lioness. This is nothing new, it is something I’ve always done. I just thought I was past it. That I had harnessed this proclivity to escape into something beautiful that I could use at will. But I am reminded that this is what it looks like when I mess up: I run away, I hide, I escape. All that’s left to do now is to understand, to look at the wreckage left of these few months and examine them without trying to criticise.

Time, spare change and pocket lint.

You won’t be hearing from me for a little while, and I hope that’s okay— is something I should have written 3 weeks ago, before my sister’s wedding completely engulfed my timetable, when I knew already that I would be too keen on 2 a.m. conversations and too tired from them to write anything, to want to write anything.

But in my defence, I didn’t worry about it much, entirely too concerned with living the present moment for everything it was. Man, I’ve lived these past 3 weeks. So much so that for a long minute, it seemed impossible that it had been 3 weeks and not 2. It’s like reading a novel and getting really into it, so that when you reach the end, you think : “Is it over already?”. In a way, it makes me think—why aren’t my weeks usually packed with as much meaning? Why is life wishy-washy, the waters so low and still that any movement, however small, becomes a major event? I should always be living. Be it in the great or small ways. This is the kind of battle I am leading these days : pushing meaninglessness out of my life. Making every second worth it.

This is something I’ve realised ever since traveling abroad for the first time, I’ve understood just how much a day can hold. I’ve re-evaluated my perception of Time, and —most amazingly, most importantly— of the realm of possibility. I’m not careless about my minutes now, I don’t leave them behind in my pockets with the lint and stray change, don’t forget them in the slack of the workload. Instead, I string them together like a beaded necklace, giving all moments this continuous flow, where they succeed one another in a stream of events that is memorable, that does not make me feel as though I’ve woken up from a 2 or 3 hour spell, not remembering where the time has gone and who has robbed me of it…

I am the worst planner I know, in my defence. All that daydreaming and world-building has to come at a cost, you know.

But I’m learning. I’m trying. It’ll work out, somehow.

Wispy warmth.

young-adult-old-soul-magic-realism-art-alexandra-levasseur — Art by : Alexandra Levasseur

I let my hair down at night so the stars will mistake it for the midnight sky and settle there. I think it works, because often I awake to stardust woven in my hair and galactic visions streaked in my mind’s eye.

My hair, I have noted, has grown out, giving an air of incredible softness to my face. A sort of gentle femininity I am unused to. For about a year now, I’ve been sporting what I call an office-girl hairstyle : shoulder length with long layers. But now I feel as though it’s all worn in, if a hairstyle can be that. The straight, sharp edges have mellowed out, the humidity is creating waves out of my hair, making it undulate with every nascent thought, every momentary, imagined world. My hair has seen one too many case of bedhead, has been too warm —spread out about my pillow during long, contemplative mornings— for it to be office-like.

An overlong fringe now brushes my cheekbones, long layers tickle the underside of my jaw all day long. My hair has ventured well past my clavicle. Can a hairstyle feel homey? Because this one does.

I have never known myself to be this soft-looking, even when I had hair tumbling all the way down my back. I’ve never woken up to so many stars caught in my hair. I want to think it’s this inner gentleness I have been working on, drawing it out gently from a well inside of me, wisp by wisp.

Now it’s time to cut this wispy warmth, but I feel in me that this won’t change a thing, that it won’t stop the stars from coming.

A writer.

young-adult-old-soul-writing-cadmiumyellowdeep- — Art by : cadmiumyellowdeep

Since I stopped being a child, I’ve always taken care to keep my dreams and the real world separate.

Even if I would dip my toes back in the other worlds on bus journeys or open a window into daydream in the middle of class, both these worlds were left relatively estranged, sealed off from the other.

By day I slipped into reality and meandered down its labyrinthine alleyways. By night I flew into dreams, and strange visions awakened in me, tickling parts of my psyche I did not even know were alive. It felt strangely like I was sectioning myself, partitioning two opposing sides. Without need for any foul concoctions, I had somehow landed myself into a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde kind of conundrum.

And yet, one without the other was incomplete : the real world without dreams felt hollow ; dreams that were not grounded in reality lost their meaning, fading like smoke in a gust of wind.

Still, it had to be done. My dreams were far too great to ever achieve. I didn’t, couldn’t possibly have what it takes — everyone else said so. Or rather, they didn’t have to. Their deep-held beliefs spoke for themselves. You see, my dreams bled into life every time I held a pen and while that meant I was good at languages and writing, it was not a very special skill to have. Everyone can write. Millions of people master two languages. At any point in time, your skill and therefore you, are replaceable. There are countless other people who are better at it than you anyway, who’ve been doing it for longer. How likely would it be that of all the writers in the world, I would be the one to make something out of my writing ? Not very, apparently. So if you have a replaceable skill like that, don’t turn it into a dream. Don’t take it seriously. Try something else, and do some writing on the side, if you want.

That’s what it started out as : “Writing is not a real skill. Languages are easy. Only the very few people who are really good at it ever succeed.”

For my own good, I should not dream big. I should settle for some average occupation or the other, safe in the knowledge that I would never have made it had I followed the inconsistent path of dreams. I would have lost momentum halfway through and would have fallen flat on my face. And yet, in spite of all that being drilled into me, in spite of me telling myself these things, dreams kept spilling onto the well-constructed reality others had built for me.

Disbelief met with determination, and after many years, my dreams infiltrated reality, and I am now a little of what I thought I would never be : a writer.

It didn’t turn out exactly how I pictured it, but it is what it is and it is more than what I ever thought I would get.

The greatest point of tension is that now the two worlds do not mix well. They are each wary of the other, unused to being anything but two separate entities. Now that my dreams are grounded in a kind of reality, I don’t know what to do next. I cannot tell apart the dreams I have just for the sake of having them from the ones I actually want to bring into the real world.

I mean, is writing even my thing anymore? I just happened to be good at it and did it. Could it be I’ve yet to find my “thing”? I don’t know.

I cannot keep being content, stagnating in the kind of joy I am experiencing now.

Because I am being gifted a luxury very few people have the privilege to experience : I have a little bit of everything, and the winds are in my favour. I have some time, some money, perspective, freedom, support… I am being given everything I need to achieve my dreams.

The question is, do I even have one?

I’m not sure what I want. All this time I’ve told myself dreams were impossible and now it turns out they aren’t all that unusual here in the real world.

It’s that feeling, you know, when you just want to make something out of yourself. It would be such a waste not to.

Astronaut helmets.

This weekend, find me at home, teetering over the edges of my own universe, immersed in tasks I do with love. Find me pouring all my skill in the very tip of my finger, in the slice-thin pointiness of a size 0 paintbrush, where I will be painting both daisies and pokemon alike on the cream paper of birthday cards.

Well actually, this weekend I do not plan to be found at all. I will lose myself instead in all the worlds I have been born into : my worlds of rainy days I long for, of carefree summer days, childhood scents, a hidden world of vulnerability…And all through this cosmos, these interlinked planets and blinking constellations, music will play, soft and tender, with words that ring true or beautiful and harmonies that make my own heartstrings vibrate.

Yes, this weekend I am in immersion, astronaut helmet and all. I won’t be answering the phone, because I’ll be making even more long-distance calls…Yeah, this weekend you won’t find me at all. Not on this planet, not in this world. My body will be somewhere in a cozy room, but my soul will be out there, longing for more.

Listening to :

The Adriatic Sea.

Young Adult Old Soul Writing Magic Realism — Art by 9jedit

I’ve made it to the other side of the world.

Across oceans, following the course of the Adriatic sea from above the clouds, watching Italy branch out into veins of light pulsating underneath my naked eyes.

I am changed forever, as though I’ve earned a scar. There’s a certain history to me now, carved into my veins, stored carefully into the drawers of my mind. Tattooed into my irises, the memory of not looking up at stars, instead gazing at them as equals, eye-to-eye.

“I’ve reached.” My mind whispers.

I could reach out and pick stars by millions, as though flowers in an interplanetary garden.

But I’ve learned better over the years. What would there be left for others to dream about if I picked all the flowers and reaped all the stars? Who would want to wake up to a decimated garden, a starless sky?

Instead, I will nurture what is left of the star in me. Kindling its fires with experiences like these, if I can.

Listening to :

Because I’m a huge nerd, this is the song I was listening to when we were flying over the Adriatic sea 😂

And happy holidays!