01/12/2011

I no longer feel like writing more words on here. Time to turn a new leaf

and I'm afraid this blog is part of the old. Thanks for reading.

29/11/2011

When words fail to describe the intensity felt within and the serene joy that comes with it, sometimes music is a better relay.

29/11/2011

To my life, my thoughts, and everything that led to where I'm at now

What if... what if I had run away when I was younger? What if I had left home - would it all be different today? Would I be less of a confused mess? Would I have a life to speak of, instead of just words and thoughts, and how much different would it all have turned out if I'd left years ago, when I was still young enough to adapt and learn to fly...

I was thinking about a whole lot of pointless what-if scenarios today, mainly triggered by a conversation about one of my cousins, whom I haven't seen in a decade now. She's my youngest cousin, and we met exactly three times in our lives. Yet her life turned out quite parallel to mine in some strange ways, except she did the opposite of me in the end - she ran away.

Let's rewind for s second and give it some context, shall we?

I met this cousin for the first time when we were little - I was 9 and she was a blond-haired, blue-eyed 5 year-old from the East. She came with her mother to stay for a few weeks in Paris with my mother and I, and the truth is that I don't remember much of it at all. I'm guessing we spent our time playing with dolls or running about in the park. What I do remember is her mother - my aunt - going crazy at some point after an argument with my mother that led her to lock herself up in my bedroom and refusing to get out for days. Their stay turned so bad that my mother had to send them both back early, and that was it.

When I was 13, we went to visit my mother's family in their country to spend Christmas with them for the first time. My cousin was there too, but without her mother. Her father had left eons ago and her mother couldn't cope with looking after my cousin, who by then was around 9 years old, so she was often left in the care of our grand-parents, whom I met a total of 3 or 4 times in my life. I remember one morning sitting on the floor by the large wooden coffee table, writing a letter to a school friend on some plain piece of paper because that was all I had. My cousin came to sit next to me with an old rag doll - probably the only one she ever got. She kept talking to me in her language and I kept saying "I don't understand what you're saying", and then she gave me a few sheets of writing paper with Disney characters adorning the sides. Beyond that memory, I remember next to nothing.

The last time I met her, it was the summer of my 18th birthday and she was 14. Her blond hair had been cut so short she almost looked like a boy. I was staying at another aunt's place for a few days before heading back to London for good and she'd come to stay for a few days as well. This time, we didn't really talk at all, and I found her quite withdrawn and lost. Little did I know that during that same period, she was about to be taken by her mother pretty much overnight to move to Germany. I was withdrawn and lost, too, and only really remember one random moment of her and another cousin sunbathing in the garden.

I found the parallel funny between me and her, how she'd been taken overnight to move into a whole other country just the way it happened with me. Nowadays she's fluent in German, while I'm fluent in English, so there was never a plan from life to get us to ever talk to each other, I'm guessing. Just like me, she landed in a foreign city whose language she couldn't speak, struggling with her mother in different ways.

And that's where the parallel stops and the opposite life choices come in. As soon as she turned 18, she left home and never went back. I... just stayed and never really tried to leave.

Not long ago I learned that she got married, but she never invited her mother to the wedding, and they are no longer in touch. I saw her mother a couple of years ago when she came to visit us for a few days. She was upset and angry that her daughter had cut her off.

But here's the thing. There is only two choices in the story: either you stay out of loyalty and therefore give up your own right to live as your own person (the choice I made without really knowing at the time) or you put yourself first and severe the bonds (my cousin's choice). Neither choice is right or wrong, but the outcomes are as opposed as night and day. Sometimes you have to leave for as long as it takes to be ready to see certain people again - even family. But I missed the boat, I was too weak, too... weak. Too scared and isolated.

I just keep thinking that there is such a thing as too much love to the point of suffocating a person and leading them to become helpless and unable to ever cope on their own.

26/11/2011

I keep wondering why I can't get used to the idea of solitude. I need to embrace it and yet the more I try, the more depressed it makes me. Why can't I even find solace in solitude? Why does it always have to feel like loneliness for me?

Since I cannot bond with people, I really need to start getting used to being alone. I wish I could stab my own heart. It is this heart inside this chest that feels so heavy with unspoken sorrows and for no reason. If it didn't exist, I would be free... I would be at peace.

I'm tired of this tortured soul I've somehow inherited. It feels like fire burning inside constantly... pure inner torture.

It's like... not being where you should be, and not doing what you ought to be doing, in a way. There is a pull inside that keeps torturing me, telling me that it's all wrong. And I have no idea what that pull wants me to do.

24/11/2011

I'm starting to wonder if I'm not heading towards a complete mental breakdown at some point. I can barely control or contain my emotions, and the greater awareness I now have of my social retardation feels like I've opened Pandora's box in the worst way possible.

I keep watching myself, especially around others, but I can't even trust my own perception of things because if my perception is twisted then obviously I'll keep perceiving things in a twisted way and therefore draw twisted conclusions. I find myself feeling the increasing need to keep people away. So long as they don't know 'me', all is fine. The moment they approach me or spend too much time around me... it all goes terribly awry. So I'm just trying hard to keep away from people as much as I can, a distance that is more for their benefit than mine because in the end I'm the one who's alone. I'm just tired of playing the role of the weirdo.

Today I had to go to an informal business lunch at some posh restaurant where they serve you tiny portions in giant plates. I have to say the first few times I was made to eat in these places, I had to bite my lip hard not to laugh out loud at the sight of things like three peas in the middle of a massive white plate placed under my nose by an overzealous waiter. However I'll admit the food itself is often scrumptious and as tiny as the dishes may appear, they do fill you up (except for that pea occurrence, but then again that was just one of many starters).

As I sat at the table, I made myself relax and smile, looking eager to take part in whatever conversation, or just listen to it. My colleague, who sat right next to me, kept a serious face that made her look like she couldn't care less, and yet everyone at the table kept talking to her, while I sat there like a lemon. At some point, I said something that the people across the table couldn't hear, so they just ignored me. The next moment, my colleague says something that the people across the table couldn't hear, and guess what? They all start leaning closer over the table to listen.

This has happened SO many times I've lost count. It makes me feel like a ghost, like... like complete shit.

It's not even like I'm talking gibberish or about completely insane things. Or maybe I am, I'm just too insane already to realise it. There has to be something that I do or don't do that makes people ignore me.

The worst part came when we were ordering desert. Everyone said what they wanted, and then... they just skipped me. I tried to say something, and believe me I was being loud enough, but people didn't even stop talking - they didn't even look at me. The next moment, everyone looks genuinely surprised to realise that I've been forgotten.

It all feels so much like a living nightmare in slow motion... I almost want to laugh thinking back on all these horrible social occurrences because it sounds way too far-fetched.

Statistically speaking, if these things happen to me with a lot of people then the odds are that the problem lies with me, but I've reached my limits. I don't want to try anymore because I don't even know what's to try, what's to do or not to do. I just want to keep the hell away from this alien society.

23/11/2011

I went back to work this morning. I realised during the day that the more I hated it, the emptier I felt, and the emptier I felt, the faster time went - because I felt nothing but indifference in the end.

During my lunch break, I took a long stroll down one of the city's most beautiful parks, which happens to be only a stone throw away from my office. As I walked by the lake, the winter sunshine was shimmering like a thousand diamonds in the water. Crispy leaves on fire beneath my feet, I stopped at the sight of a huge white bird grooming itself right by the edge of the lake. It was no mute swan this time, but a pelican - massive. As I stopped to take a picture, it suddenly turned its long orange beak towards me and began waddling with extreme clumsiness in my direction only to stop by the low barrier that separates the public from the bank of the lake.

It stopped there and just posed in front of me as I took pictures... and then when people started gathering around me to watch it in awe and take pictures, too, the bird set off back towards the water... but as it did, the huge wings it had to drag beside its body made it waddle so clumsily that everyone started laughing.

"Look how he's walking!" said one woman, out of breath from laughing.

But all I could think about is Baudelaire's poem... It all felt so much like deja-vu, in the sense that I'd mentioned that poem a couple of days ago... and there I was, looking at the real-life version of its true meaning... in all its splendour, so much so that it hurt.

The Albatross 

Often, to amuse themselves, the men of a crew 

Catch albatrosses, those vast sea birds 

That indolently follow a ship 

As it glides over the deep, briny sea. 

Scarcely have they placed them on the deck 

Than these kings of the sky, clumsy, ashamed, 

Pathetically let their great white wings 

Drag beside them like oars. 

That winged voyager, how weak and gauche he is, 

So beautiful before, now comic and ugly! 

One man worries his beak with a stubby clay pipe; 

Another limps, mimics the cripple who once flew! 

The poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky 

Who frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman; 

When exiled on the earth, the butt of hoots and jeers, 

His giant wings prevent him from walking. 

- Charles Baudelaire

On my way back to the office, the random thought of Peter Pan came to my mind, and right at the back of my mind a thought went: "You're in Wendy's city, just remember that." And then I started looking all around me and it was true. I am in Wendy's city.

22/11/2011

The piece of music above may be entitled 'Danse Macabre' but it actually sounds far from macabre to me - more like getting sucked into the middle of a Tim Burton movie in all its fascinating weirdness.

I can't believe how fast my extra-long 'weekend' has gone. I feel sick to my stomach at the mere thought of having to go back to work tomorrow. I feel even worse when I think about my colleagues and especially my boss.

I keep telling myself that I'll have more time off until Christmas than I will have work days, but still...

Last Friday was arguably my worst day to date in that place. I hoped that being away for a few days would help me feel better, but it wasn't to be. I think the reason I feel sick and can't get over it is because I realised that I've already been categorised by my colleagues and specifically my boss as the pushover of the story. My lack of social skills always put me right into that spot every time.

My mother was unhelpful in terms of advice. She simply said: "Well, just quit." But that made me retort at once: "Isn't that the easy way out... to just quit when the going gets tough?" to which she just shrugged.

At the back of my head, just as I was saying "Isn't that the easy way out... to just quit when the going gets tough?" the exact opposite thought occurred to me that life is way to short to waste time being miserable in some place, might as well try else where.

I've since been left torn between two opposite plans of action: endure or drop it in the search for greener pastures. The middle ground seems to then be: find something else first, then quit. Neither simply enduring nor quitting overnight would be the right plan of action. The middle ground one makes the most sense, but how come the other two feel much more appealing? I'm guessing going from one extreme to another is always easier to do than actually making the effort of not just finding the middle ground, but going with it.

I have undeniably learned some things in that job. It was like a crash course into one aspect of the world I would never have delved in on my own due to my dislike of all things related to money, finance and so-called economies. What I got to understand a bit better in more concrete terms than just saying 'it's all wrong' will hopefully help me take into account more factors in my reasoning in the long run.

Apart from that... In the late summer of my 24th birthday, I began writing a long story that I never really finished, and beyond the fact that it turned out to be more of an exercise than anything, I discovered along the way that there were some things that helped my mind calm down and focus better. Unfortunately, barely a year later, and just as I was starting to find clarity within my mind, an unexpected turn of events kind of messed it all up and to this day I haven't been able to get back to my previous 'normal' self. Three years on and I'm finally getting back to it.

I had a strange day yesterday. I almost wanted to add 'as usual'... isn't everyday strange because every day is new and is being experienced for the first time every time? How different would be our perception of time if we never divided it, if we never had the same names for the days of the week and that of months for instance? After all, it's an illusion. On the one hand, we have the 'same' days and months passing by over and over with each year that flies by, but none of these days and months are ever the same, they are forever brand new.

But to get back to my strange day... I realised more fully that I probably come from a completely insane family. The fact that I can think or reason well at times is only a random composition from the madness within.