Love Letter
The age-old game of Spotto! is revived for us. We are like two children in those moments.
. . .
I have been away for a while. Breaking the flow of blogging and a concrete promise to the self to submit an entry every week was too easy. Picking writing back up is hard. A side of me that is nagging tries to mete out some crippling self-doubt and depreciation about my lack of consistency, but a better part of me resists being subsumed under the drape of negativity and says at least I’m writing again. The issue is, what. Perfectionism and a journey to overcome this overworked hamartia still remains the core of these blogs, through my storytelling of personal experiences, thoughts, reflections. It may be prosaic or utterly self-absorbing or both. But in the end I am doing this for myself, even if it does not fit into the standard criteria of what constitutes a blog.
For the sake of authenticity let me disclose that not much has changed in respect of my mental well-being, with only a slight degradation as life tends to usher in. Perhaps at its limit there is a positive inclination, albeit I can’t see the progress close-up.
But I had lots of new thoughts, rekindling old thoughts, and circulating existing thoughts.
I’ve been trying to live busy to quell thoughts and drain the existentialism which clogs my mind. It has been tiring, but I can’t complain — it is the adult life, perhaps an ideal life, if the paragon of your day is one which does not make you feel too slothful. The workload is somewhat alleviated at this moment, which makes me procrastinate on the important tasks I must get done. I see that there is no positive reinforcement nor sweeping depression — just an uneasy, dissatisfied peace. I wonder if I’ll ever evolve to be better, to be happy. Recently it dawned on me, and whilst it sounds obvious and counterintuitive at the same time, that peace and happiness don’t tend to coexist. If I’m happy and devoted to doing something, I am motivated by anxiety to want to do this pursuit better. If I feel at peace, I’ve let go.
Work-life balance is a travesty of young, modern life. I don’t know. What do we live for? What do we prioritise? What we so desperately want — does it compromise who we are? Everything floats around. I don’t take precedence, not even to myself.
Using a blogging platform to not contribute legitimate ideas, seemingly only to diarise — and about such a dispiriting matter to boot — inflicts a certain sense of guilt upon me. Self-inflicted, perhaps. What is pertinent? For potential readers — I may seem so caught up in self-pity. What insights and worldly answers am I to give (and even thinking like this, endowing myself with a non-existent duty, doesn’t this render me even more self-absorbed?) except a small, rare eureka at times which struggles to identify itself, being so unintelligible and self-contained? For a novelist’s purpose? That makes me a forgery of Han Kang, who claimed (and validly so, not that I am in the position to adjudicate on execution) that she writes to explore human suffering, and the vulnerability of lives.
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I hardly feel like I know how to be, let alone how to live, at the moment.
I missed out on my cousin’s wedding (which holds more significance than I can express, given she was like an older sister to me whom I was estranged from since I moved continents away). I fucked up on a test (so trivial, but big, considering it feels representative of my effort-talent-execution trend). I had a big fight with someone I hold dear (quite crippling, although I should expect accordingly now). Those three factors accrued within a single day alone made me want to suspend consciousness, as dramatic as it seems. And I hate it, because all this seems so melodramatic. I really do think cringe culture is impeding expression and genuinity. The internet makes me angry, but I’m still addicted to it. I seem to be unravelling.
The most personal is the most creative, is what filmmaker Bong Joon Ho cited as his personal motto in his speech at the Academy Awards. But what if your most personal issues coincide with mundane feelings of doubt everyone experiences? And I can’t seem to vet this concept any better than reiterating very internal thoughts that are remote even to myself. Like a really boring lecture that goes on and on. Maybe the problem is that I’m not showing enough, only telling. But a blog isn’t a narrative, is it? What if I deposit random but profound moments of my life which I have dot-pointed in my notes app as a reminder to revisit?
There are certain moments you know which, either during or right after, will be imprinted in your mind for a long time being. Words depart, the exact contents of what was said dissolve as memory erodes, but feelings stay. It can still be invoked upon your calling, keen and bright. And those feelings accompany certain images which streak across your window of memory, stringing into a technicolour montage sequence. There are moments so memorable, that hold such unbelievable poetic significance, that you feel like you are living out pure irony. Perhaps you are one who can naturally draw arbitrary things into painful connections. Everything seems dramatised, amplified. I don’t know, back when I had therapy she called this sensory overload. But it lives differently within me now, I think.
I remember: sitting on the grass, which was both cold and warm under the dazzling sunlight. The sky was very blue, serene, but with some clouds. But those were nice fluffy white clouds that didn’t detract away the sunniness. There was a fight. Some hurtful things said, here and there. Felt something trickling across my fingers, knuckles. A yellow ladybug. I laughed. Later, when things were still unresolved and we were walking together apart, I saw a yellow car passing by in the dead-grey streets of Museum station. I thought back to the prevalence of yellow in the single day. I cried later that night, thinking back.
Love is the queerest thing. It makes you apathetic.
It makes you long.
In the end, I am working towards loving myself fully.
Day 14:
- At the very least I try.
