Sad endings

It's particularly painful to see yourself so connected to fictitious characters. Holding onto them, crying with them. Real world does not move me as us they do. Why? Is it because I am lonely, craving a connection, craving the need to be understood?

They know what we want. They know how to manipulate us into little soft balls of  play dough. We, the audience, are totally malleable in their hands. 

The state of acknowledging that someone else has such power over us, could that be an act of intelligence?

I know, at this point I am rambling, because I want to bare all. I want to show you the inside of my soul. I want to give up on my feigned sanity. I want you to give in to my stubborn desire.

But I lie, because I still don't dare to show all.

I fear powerful words.

Like love. And Loss.

They keep building through life, building up. I keep my raw edge blunt. Because I fear cutting myself otherwise. And then bleeding all out.

So I keep my hesitation intact. I don't dare to name real feelings, just keep them as a sound that barely leaves my throat.

Only at times, through fiction, do I occasionally let the build up materialise into something tangible.

Knowing that soon it will ebb. Just like it peaked. 

But in that moment, it's real. It's painful. 

And I know I cried for something that does not exist.

On second thoughts though, maybe I cried because it does not exist.

Self introductions

Why is there so many ways to look at the same past? Like each version has a life of it's own? Visualise yourself as a nine-tailed fox. Each time you turn back, there is a different start point to your existence.

The past seems to keep evolving into a history that I never truly lived, but it makes sense. Because each time I look back, my present self is at a different vantage point.

Looking for a stable future seems suddenly pointless. And to think that this was what kept me down for a good part of last year. Even after telling myself that I have found short term resolution, I always knew in my heart I had not. But I so wanted to pull myself out of the daze. Self preservation requires the ability to convincingly lie to yourself, I guess.

...

Most times the strangest person in a room filled with people, is myself. When I introduce myself, I have a well rehearsed script that I stick with. Over time I have learnt to say it with confidence. I used to stutter saying my name at one point. Now, I have made peace with a few variations of it, and I can say it (them) aloud without much thought. I envy (and like) people who can say my name confidently. But annoyingly, I relate most to those who mumble it in a barely audible voice. Perhaps these are the ones who see through my act. They don't pretend to care or understand me (or my name). 

For a while I even took relief in physical stripping to enter a Japanese onsen (public bath house). The act of being able to strip naked in the presence of other people was psychologically speaking, quite difficult for me, but once the bandaid was ripped, gave me an uncanny feeling of liberation, albeit short lived. Metaphorically, I now know the feeling of being able to face yourself. 

And hence also the fact that I am not there yet. 

After 4 decades of living both inside and outside of myself, I am still too scared to bare all, and look at myself for who I am. A 'me' without my parents, family, friends, without a job and without internet. I cannot put a face to this person. I have gotten used to the comfort of my parasitic existence, where I live off multiple refracted versions of a personality created purely by my circumstance.

And no matter how many times I turn back, the one unchanging fear that has lived through each iteration of my history, is the fear of digging deep only to find an empty shell.

Night in shining armour

So I am back to this dark corner of my mind and this blog, which I realize is just an extended representation of the same. 

Actually I never really thought of my writing as dark and depressing, until this person who read my blog for the first time, told me so. I guess in my mind I am mostly a lighter version of dark... Like  70% dark chocolate or an espresso kind of dark - not too happy but definitely not the sad kind... Oh well, it's always interesting to see yourself from someone else's point of view.

Anyway, here I am after my holidays and most importantly the trip to Japan last year. And no it was not holiday, but a work trip, it was only a week and I did feel guilty of getting the chance to go back on my own. But at the same time, I was excited beyond words. Because of the unexpectedness of the trip, I guess I couldn't rationalize in my head the intersection of what I deeply wanted, and the sudden manifestation of it in real life.

I was also very scared of going back, scared that the world I had left behind existed only in my head. 

This wasn't true though. And I was happily surprised that our life in Japan was not an illusion but in fact very much real. And I felt the same connect and same strange sense of peace while I was there. Just that this time it was less falling in love, but more of a reassuring steady kind of love. My friend and I even joked about it - 恋じゃなくて普通の愛みたいな感じ。

It also made me realize, that I am the kind of person who can overthink and ruin a perfectly good relationship by constantly questioning it's goodness. 

A bit like a night sky. Filled with light from countless stars, and yet you mostly see the darkness.