A list of things I have done but have been unable to write about:
Dyed my hair purple
Attended a writing workshop
Signed up for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award
Attended a good friend’s wedding
Some, more than others, were impulse decisions. Eff-it moments when I decided my fears didn’t matter, recognising somewhere that I would be more myself once I had discarded them, because my fears aren’t necessarily me. Not when they stop me from doing what I really want.
So, hey, purple hair. Writing workshop. Volunteering every Saturday night with a group of young people I don’t really know. Yay.
Needless to say, I regret it all at least once a week.
In the mirror I see copper-brown strands, the purple long washed-away. I tug at it self-consciously and wish my hair could be all black again. Every Saturday evening, I am quietly quivering at the notion of having to interact with a group of young people who are all friends, whilst I am a new addition.
I’m always wishing I hadn’t done any of it. Because after my one moment of foolish bravery is over, my fears are back at my side again, nagging. My anxiety finds something to keep me up at night, to convince me that I am wrong to not be panicking.
Still, I am not dyeing my hair black. I even catch myself liking the glint of the sun on these select light-brown strands of hair.
Still, I am calling every Saturday to know where the group is meeting up. And when one homeless person gushes about how the macaroni we served were the best he’s ever had, or when another takes some for his two daughters, I’m happy I was there to help.
My fear wishes I hadn’t done any of it. But I, I keep doing it anyway. I keep moving forward, and discarding fear like yesterday’s fashion. I regret and complain and most of all, I know better. I understand that who I want to be takes precedence over any anxiety I might have. My time is limited, am I really going to spend it all cowering?
I awake some days to already stale mornings, like coffee left out from the night before and smoke breaks in inadequately ventilated spaces.
The pounding headache from 2 a.m. insomnia clawing at the scar on my brow, burning retinas, millisecond blackouts, unsteady feet and foul moods — I carry over the acrid taste of yesterday and days before as though some thick paste of regret I can neither scrape off my tongue nor swallow past.
I stumble through the day, hiding from the sun and thoughts that blare an unforgiving light, the kind that exposes all the things you want to conceal. Setting out, I already know that all I want to do is be back home already and wallow, sleep it out until the next day.
Yeah, some days you know in advance it’s going to be a bad one. Still, I think it’s okay to allow yourself that sometimes. Time to wallow, to indulge in some of the pain and ache. Not always in a rush to fix things or to look on the bright side, to not let the day go to waste, to turn the day around. It’s a process, it takes time.
That’s why I think it’s important to let yourself acknowledge the bad parts too. It’s important to complain and wallow sometimes. After all, you cannot hope to heal when you don’t know where it hurts and why.
Note : A little while back, I found out about this month-long poetry/prose/flash fiction challenge called Escapril, and which proposes the most wonderful prompts. Now, it is unlikely that I will be able to do a prompt a day. But you can look forward to reading some posts inspired by these writing prompts(I already have my eye on a few of them lol). Today’s post quite coincidentally matches the first day theme and boy am I glad for it. Anyway, you can find out more about Escapril on their Instagram page!
And my heart, like a cup in the sink, drinks, drinks, drinks….until it drops, sunken, to the bottom. The glacial dampness seizes my throat, clouds my head and I swallow around it.
I thought, I thought I had it under wraps. I thought, a thought too much an accusation, that I was getting better now. But my heart has sunk to my feet, dragging everything in its passage. Lungs, stomach, even my veins feel weighed down, crushed under some leaden weight. Where a void emerges in my chest now, the cold dread fills it in, and colours outside the lines.
Anxiety, I have learned too many times, feels like choking on fear.
Shuddering breaths enter and leave my body and I forget the 4-7-8 that helps so well. Yet the fog in my head won’t clear, will not be shaken off. It’s not long before my eyes, too, turn cloudy. It’s never this huge explosion though, and that may be the worst part of it all. Anxiety gears up, perpetually, for something that never comes to pass. It constantly renews a state of turmoil, churns old fears anew. So, an hour later, my heart has still not settled. Racing, still. Like me, it tries to run away from problems, to leap out of my chest— but it cannot run from itself, just like I cannot.
An hour later finds me pacing — a quiet release. Up and down, around the same streets, I am shuffling. It soothes my brain somehow and subtly releases some of the fog from behind my eyes, clears the veil of smoke obstructing my view.
Breathe. Breathe.
An hour later, like many other days, like countless other moments like these, finds me at the beach. Deliverance comes in all soft, crashing waves and the sharp, the grounding tang of salt, the sea breeze, the trees that sway in a comforting, lulling rustle.
Breathe. Breathe.
And I do.
I force myself to see beyond the fog. To become the lighthouse that guides a keeling boat to safety as the storm rages on. I breathe and draw out patterns from the sand, swishing my foot sideways, leaving behind shaky archs and footprints beneath. And the sea, crashing, reborn every few minutes, perpetually setting itself back together, plucks at the tangles in my body. With every soft crash, my heart rate slows and Anxiety unravels under the pale, warm sunlight. All the fog has vanished into the sea, whisked away by the salt spray and the smell of iodine. Anxiety comes undone a half-hour later, nothing now but a soft tiredness cloaking my bones. The boat that rocked dangerously is now safely brought to shore, swaying from the aftershock.
“And it’s not easy— never—the only way to sun-stained hands is to grab the light yourself and never let it go.”
Art by: Unknown
Sun-stained fingers delicately prying open darkened, charred ribs.
Hearts can become such messes, you know.
Clogged with ash, unmoving, hard, cutting like the surface of a mountain.
“Can you even imagine,” she said, “that this used to be young and tender? That it rushed and skipped, halted and leaped.”
Now, it is just a heap of ash.
“Even so,” he says, “you manage.”
“You take a little bit of light everyday, and…”
And it looked so easy for him. Bright, sunny as he was. All golden skin, sun-lightened hair.
“And it’s not easy— never—the only way to sun-stained hands is to grab the light yourself and never let it go.”
No matter the keenness of the burn, the sharpness of the sting. Grab the light and never let it go. Because this burn, it is the burn of alcohol on fresh wounds. It burns because it heals. It burns because it takes away the things that have slipped inside, so tightly enmeshed in parts of yourself.
“We’ve lived through moments when we thought we couldn’t make it. Nights when it felt there would be no dawn. Times when we wished the world would end, but the mornings instead dawned cheerful and bright, burning our retinas. And we picked ourselves up the best we could and made it through another day. And then another, and another until the days weren’t so bad anymore. We’ve made it through everything we thought we could never survive. We’ve outlasted our sadness, outlived every envy. We’ve traveled from summer to winter, through spring and fall. “
And here we are, all of us. We’ve almost made it to the end of another year.
We’ve lived through moments when we thought we couldn’t make it. Nights when it felt there would be no dawn. Times when we wished the world would end, but the mornings instead dawned cheerful and bright, burning our retinas. And we picked ourselves up the best we could and made it through another day. And then another, and another until the days weren’t so bad anymore. We’ve made it through everything we thought we could never survive. We’ve outlasted our sadness, outlived every envy. We’ve traveled from summer to winter, through spring and fall. We have been journeying around the sun, and within ourselves. And it’s hard to tell exactly which distance takes the longest to cover. But I think I know now. It takes the earth 365 or 366 days to complete a rotation around the sun. But the journey inward is infinite. I hope you have had a beautiful one, this year.
To be honest, I wanted to post this some time ago. On some date with some form of symbolism. On the last day of the week (To emphasise finality) or the first (Because ends are beginnings). But I realised that it meant relinquishing too much power to Time. Giving it the ability to dictate my life choices and decisions. There might be a right time for everything, but there is also never a wrong time.
So I’ve started to do now everything I wanted to do next year. Because in the end, isn’t now all we truly have? I am already making (somewhat big) plans for next year, but who’s to say I will be alive then to see them come to fruition? So I don’t want to let Time control me. It has enough of a hold on all our lives already.
Even so, I can’t deny that it is the end of a journey. I hope that, even now, even if your year hasn’t gone as you wanted it to, you can find something in it that has value to you. And if you can’t, then I hope you can find it in yourself to be grateful that the past year has provided a bridge between the past and the future. If it hadn’t been for this year, you would never be able to live through the next. And I hope you can forgive yourself for the times when you weren’t as good as you wanted to be. When you hurt someone or didn’t live up to your expectations.
It’s a new year ahead. Heck, it’s a new day ahead tomorrow. It’s a new life ahead now. Seize the day. Do what you fear doing most. Do what you want to do most. Do what you need to do most. Tomorrow is promised to no one. All we have is now.
And yet we live in hopes of seeing many more tomorrows. It’s a delightful little paradox.
I do not think wishes alone are enough to make dreams come true. But I believe they can help along the way. Help us not lose hope. Help us believe that our dreams can manifest into reality with enough hard work.
So, if I may, here are my wishes to you for the coming year. And because I’ve said so much already, I will only say this: This year, I hope you bloom. And if you have already, then I hope you continue to blossom throughout all of the seasons. And even if you don’t, that’s fine. That’s alright. You will bloom again.
Thank you to everyone who has been reading this blog this year, or the year before. You’ve all made the journey worthwhile. I’ve enjoyed reading you all, too. And I hope to see you all in excellent health next year for another trip around the sun.
I hope you all have the best end of year, filled with warmth and family.
See you all next year (Which is to say, in less than a week!)
Yours,
A.
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I did get my symbolism after all, by the way! Today’s first post was a repost of something I’d written a year back, representing the past. The second one represented the present. And this, the future. Haha, okay, I’m done rambling.
“I don’t know if you were expecting a story of how I’d fallen in love with the most wonderful person, someone who understands my struggles and all the depth and darkness. Something poetic like : “He saw her sitting alone in the darkness and instead of shining a light on her, quietly sat down beside her and held her hand, waiting the darkness out.” But this is not that kind of story. “
I sat down today on the same sofa I had sat on 5 years previously, when I believed with everything I had that nothing would ever get better.
A scrawny, withdrawn teenager then, I tried not to exist too obviously, too loudly. I felt I was nothing but all this anxiety raging inside of me, nothing but a receptacle for people’s dirty looks, their pity and yet sometimes amazingly, their jealousy. 5 years ago, I was fading out of existence, a process furthered by the discovery of human nature’s seedy underbelly. When I was finally allowed a look into an adult’s world, I decided I wanted nothing to do with it. But by then, it was a door I was practically being pushed through.
5 years ago, I was what? 15, 16? Oscillating between wanting nothing and needing it all. At the time, all hope had fled. Had spilled out on the pillow in silent midnight cries. I don’t really have hope now, either. But I have the belief that maybe one day, I could have it, and this makes all the difference. And between that ‘no‘ and this ‘maybe‘, stand 5 years and more than a few battles fought alone, to exhaustion. There were fears faced, comfort zones expanded.
I’ll get away from here, I thought, because as a teenager, that’s a totally legitimate plan to have.
But life had other plans. So I’m still here 5 years later.
I don’t know if you were expecting a story of how I’d fallen in love with the most wonderful person, someone who understands my struggles and all the depth and darkness. Something poetic like : “He saw her sitting alone in the darkness and instead of shining a light on her, quietly sat down beside her and held her hand, waiting the darkness out.” But this is not that kind of story. There was no flip. No plot twist. No one to rescue you.
It was mostly a ton of effort. Unsexy, unromantic, stinky effort.
Though I did meet good people. People who might’ve guessed at all the things I hid, but who never wanted to pry. People who were decent, who were funny and didn’t frown at my quirks, and who thought I was kindof cool, actually. People who apologised when they were late, who asked you to message them to let them know you got home safely. People who celebrated your achievements, who would drag you out of hiding and shine the light of recognition on you because take credit for your accomplishments, damn it.
I’ve got some ways to go still.
But 5 years ago, I sat on the same sofa and was another person. 5 years ago, the world was ending, in more ways than one. Today though, I am sitting here, writing, humming the melody of a waltz from a movie I love very much. My breath is light with the scent of peach iced tea and I am relishing the silence, being grateful for the time I am given.
These days, given the right opportunities, I also open up a little. Inconsequential things, stories stripped of too much emotion and detail, but spoken into the atmosphere still. These stories might just be rubble compared to the complex structures I keep inside, but it means that there is a bridge, nonetheless. That trade is open. I squirrel away parts of my story, bits and pieces that don’t connect. I am not doing ‘good’ really, but I am doing better. And in the end, I think that’s all anyone can hope for.
Hang in there, life gets better. And you want to be there to see it happen.
Note: This is Day 22 of my little NaNoWriMo Writing Challenge. This is also something I want to dedicate to a good friend, a soul sister, really, who’s going through some rough times. Just hang in there, people, it really does get better. If you liked this entry, you can also check out yesterday’s entry here, which is a little more on the cheerier side of life 🙂
“here are days when you won’t be able to make it all better. Days when you just have to play with the hand you are dealt, even if that means you have to sit this round out and wait for the next one.”
Sometimes there’s just no other way around it. There’s no shedding light on the darkness, no driving the negativity away. There’s no miracle cure to all of life’s problems.
Sometimes, it’s like a bad case of the flu. You just have to stick with it. Break out in a cold sweat, hurl all you’ve eaten out, have a fever, shiver but also feel too hot. You just have to eat soup and crackers and take lots of fluids. But even then, it’s no cure. There are days when you won’t be able to make it all better. Days when you just have to play with the hand you are dealt, even if that means you have to sit this round out and wait for the next one. Even if that means you get to feel bad when you watch your friends or people you don’t like cash in those sweet, sweet opportunities. Some days, you just…have rotten luck. And you just have to drag your sore, beaten up corpse of a body to bed and call it a day.
And it’s okay if it lasts longer than that. It’s okay. Because you aren’t meant to win all the time. You aren’t even meant to win most of the time. All you are meant to do is try your best. No one can ask any more of you than that. And it so happens that some days, your best involves you staying in bed, recovering. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Note: This is Day 19 of my NaNoWriMo Writing Challenge. Granted, writing everyday is becoming a little grating, but I’m sticking with it. I’m seeing this through even if I have to crawl to reach that finish line. Aha…hahahah…ha. But hopefully, I’ll be seeing things in a different light before November ends 🙂
“How many more times do you need to ache to understand that this isn’t normal?”
Art by: Loony
“How long has it been since you’ve been loved? Since you’ve been seen for who you truly are? How long have you been hiding—cutting off pieces of yourself and burying them in places no one would find them? How long have you been scared of people finding out about your story? How many times have you wished they would? How many more times do you need to ache to understand that this isn’t normal? These memories, these bookmarks of your story—if you bury them, they will only grow. And like baobabs, their roots will find their way to your heart. They will entrench themselves so profoundly that they will take over. Until one day, you will not even see the blueness of the sky. How long until this carefully constructed lie falls apart and you realise how empty you’ve made yourself?”
Note: This is Day 17 of my NaNoWriMo Writing Challenge. You can read the entry for Day 16 here. If you enjoyed this, I’ve also written about similar themes previously.
You may have gone through pitch-black darkness believing it would never end, but you’re not done feeling yet. This is not it. The darkness cannot take that from you. It may have temporarily blinded you, but this veil will one day drop.
There is a world out there, you know. With the most glorious kind of light—golden and warm. Pink and honey-coloured skies at sunset. There are colours you will see with your eyes closed, sparks that will tingle underneath your skin. You aren’t done feeling. The darkness that has shrouded your heart did not obscure all of it. It could not possibly have, even if there are days when it feels that it has, it has. Because there’s always more room. Always, always room for more in your heart.
You will feel love again, and light. There will be laughter again, as light and free as the sea breeze and contentment as deep as the oceans.
And one day, one day, there will be hope too.
You have so much to feel yet. Trust me, there is more to the palette than just black, and more to life than just despair.
Note: Day 7 of ‘NaNoWriMo’
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We’ve made it to Day 7! I almost can’t believe it. Today’s entry almost didn’t happen, too. Yet here we are ❤ I hope you’ve been enjoying this little challenge as much as I have, because there’s more to come yet 🙂
In the silence of a warm afternoon, I bloom. Gently, gently, unfurling every petal with care.
In the soft goldenness of the sun-caressed terrace, I cut off all my thorns. I put them aside. And though it is in my nature for them to regrow, I, for once, want to not be painful to hold.
Resiliently, as the clouds rove by, I unearth nearby weeds and shake off sharp-teethed bugs that feed off of me. Maybe it’s not all my fault, after all, that it took so long for my colours to show.
I lean towards the sun, seeking out its warm touch and gentle glow. It’s okay to take space and need things. How else could I hope to grow?
Careful still, but at ease, I bend with the wind, making an awkward partner for a dance, but dancing all the same.
I stand, a little shy, a little proud and say to the world:
Young Adult, Old Soul 