Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should.

"There was an air of luxury about the room, but it was the luxury of expert simplicity. This was his concept of wealth - the wealth of selection, not of accumulation."
- Excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

what i want more than anything, is not that you should be mine, but that i be yours. my self worth inexplicably hinges on your approximation of me. i wish that i felt differently, but i can't remember being any other way.

Reading a stranger's writing that completely encompasses the most complicated emotions that you have ever felt, that you thought were unique to you, is the most treacherous and comforting feeling, all at the same time. It intensifies everything, almost to the point of being unbearable, because now you're not only living your struggle, but someone else's as well, because it is just the same as yours. And because you relate to it, and you know it so well, it hurts infinitely more than any other type of foreign pain that you would try to sympathize with.

Trying to come to terms with the fact that the things that I want and the things that I need are mutually exclusive.

I hate maturity. And epiphanies. And growing up.


Dash all of it to hell.

night terrors

I woke up terrified, in tears, trying to run and gasping when I realized that I was frozen. For the brief moments between sleep and consciousness, I was petrified, laboring under the belief that I was still being chased. I looked around wildly, trying to make sense of my surroundings, but couldn't. And then, slowly, I came back.

This is not the first time that this has happened. While the details are different, the mood is the same. Unresolved issues that I try to ignore come to me at night, demanding my attention, making themselves known. With no solution visible in the foreseeable future, my only choice is to endure the suffering.

"I put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much"
- Excerpt from The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros

The more I try to remember, the harder I cling to memories of you, the faster they leave. It's like trying to grip water. I knew it would happen this way, but I don't want to believe that it's actually happening. It scares me to think that there might come a day where I won't be able to remember what your face looks looked like. It scares me that you went from a major concern to a passing thought. I don't want to forget. But I can't help it.

Please forgive me.

"I wondered if there would ever be a day when I didn't think about Alaska, wondered whether I should hope for a time when she would be a distant memory - recalled only on the anniversary of her death, or maybe a couple of weeks after, remembering only after having forgotten."
- Excerpt from Looking for Alaska, by John Green

I work in solitude, producing, producing, producing, until I have too much. Then I weed out the crap, leave the little that I think is good, the moderate amount that I think is kind of okay, and hope that I come across as experienced. I have never been a good judge of my own work. I can never tell the difference between mediocrity to me and brilliance to others. I can't tell if it's because I don't believe myself capable of greatness, or if it's been sitting in my thoughts for so long that I no longer recognize its greatness.

"By writing much, one learns to write well"
- Robert Southey

Reality killed the dreamer

I have realized that when I sit and think and reminisce about us (together), I am actually remembering who I imagined you to be, not who you truly were. So I guess this is my fault.

Yeah. I'll take responsibility for it this time.

"For 36 minutes I only looked at you when I had to. Because I knew that all it would take is three seconds out of those 36 minutes of us making eye contact for me to see...what I saw before, what I wanted to see - the potential in YOU. The potential in US. Then another three seconds for me to see what you really were. And probably what you still are."
- Excerpt from 36 Minutes, by Abi

Why?

Because, fuck you, that's why.

"Cussing doesn't come from a lack of vocabulary - I know all the other words. None of them speak the same language that my fucking heart does"
- Anis Mojgani

In retrospect...

No one cares until they discover how they can use you.

"Make everybody fall out of the plane first, and then explain who they were and why they were in the plane to begin with"
- Nancy Ann Dibble

Sitting, staring, trying to sort everything out. I could talk, but it would be senseless rambling. Incomplete thoughts. Incoherency. Maybe I can try to write and make sense of it all.

No. I can't. No sense. No rhyme, or reason. Just words, and sentences. They made sense in my head, but have no form outside of it. Like a jellyfish washed up on a beach. No structural integrity. They're not meant to be out of their natural environment. But they're poisonous. They have to be removed before they infect the whole. I must get rid of them. And keep them from everyone.

Except myself. I have to remember the bedlam from which I escaped. I must always remember. Keep it in an unused corner, and only bring it out in my darkest of moments.

There is no worse place to be than this bleak mental space.

"Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself"
- Franz Kafka

I talk a good game, but really, I miss being in your space, no matter how limited the time was. And now there's no time at all, because you've left.


"I wish you were here. But you're not here, you're there. And there doesn't know how lucky it is."
- Unknown