La vida loca
There are cold nights for a reason—to remind you that you're not a walking bag of protein with goals and ambitions and no heart. That somewhere inside of the ambitions that gets you out of bed every morning, there's a beating and wanting heart. There's a human being there. And boy, do we all need this reminder every once in a while. Cold nights that remind me of the phrase on my Instagram bio: "Life is for living."
Over the past couple of weeks, I have lost touch with who I once was, and I'm struggling to understand who I am now. Part of who I am now is one who is trying so hard to erase the victimised part of her. The "little, helpless girl" part of her, like it can ever be erased. Like there aren't still days when everything feels too much and I can't breathe—literally. How hard should it be to inhale and exhale?
Let me leave you to answer that.
On most days, I try to write. You know, keep up with posting on my Medium because I want to. Because it's one place I genuinely feel like I don't have to filter: my safe space. I can be very honest and vulnerable and make it a story. Tag it fiction. Or nonfiction. Or creative nonfiction. I'm the writer, yeah?
Truth is, there is a piece of you in every piece as a writer. The poems. The nonfiction and fiction and everything in-between is all you. And if people look more, they'd probably see it. Or not. But everyone does love a good story. Until you're me and struggling to write because you don't know if it's writers block or it's just that everything is a lot and you don't know how to pen it down in ways that make sense.
These days, I don't know what to say. Or how to say it. When I say IT, I mean me. What matters to me, outside of work expectations and ambitions and my big big dreams. Some days, I ask myself who I am, outside of being smart and strong and resilient and a research writer and analyst and all of those achievements. If I strip myself of everything I have, who am I?
Someone once told me I am a very sad person, and it's true. It's easy not to dwell in it and focus on all the nice stuff. On all the "real" stuff that doesn't involve nightmares and night terrors and anxiety and uncertainty and the big fucking depression that is present wherever I go. I never seem to be able to outrun it because tell me, who outrun their shadows?
I tell myself I don't want to be the sad girl. The autistic girl with clinical depression who doesn't want to do anything other than sleep for a million years. But if there's one thing I'm not, it's dishonest. I'm not dishonest. Not especially to myself. People who care about you and who love life want you to throw away all those sadness and trauma and focus on how beautiful life is.
I must agree, life is indeed beautiful. But a smart person said to leave space in your life for wonder. If I check all the boxes I want and have my dream life, isn't there space for me to be sad too? To be sad almost all the time and still do my thing regardless because I didn't choose to be sad, but I do choose how my life turns out because it's up to me? In the box that fits perfectly, isn't there space for me to be ME?
Who am I, anyway?
I love deep stuff. I want to connect with people on deep stuff, but sometimes I want shallow stuff, too. I’m so smart but dumb, too. A lover girl and a hardnut to crack. And a big lover of music—I was listening to this playlist as I was writing this. So happy and full of life, and yet so cold and detached from it all. So done with it, but so pumped about all it has to offer with its uncertainties. So stressed with work and dying on my workstation but so happy to be working every minute, because why not?
It's a fucking paradox. My life. And I love it so much that I hate it.
My friend always says there's no box. I agree with her. Agreed. There is a box. A catch. A control. Something to stop you right in your tracks and redirect you when you veer off. Call it a dream. A goal. An ambition. It's a box. We all do need a box to keep us in check, and that's what is stopping humanity from doing really barbaric stuff. El oh el. We will all be so fucking out of control without a box. So make your box as big or as small as you want to fit in all you are and all you don't know you are, but there is a box. The trick is to make the box invisible to everyone but yourself.
