Category: foggy mood

all these night i lied

It’s almost December, meaning it’s almost Spotify Wrapped season. I have a good idea of which artists are going to be my most played this year. But, in particular, I know which song is going to be my most played song this year, and it’s “Moments” by MitiS.

This song has been with me on and off for the past couple of years. In many ways, it has defined what I have felt, how my relationships have formed, the person I became after I graduated college. It took me awhile to start listening to this song again. I started listening to this song about two years ago, and then too many memories got attached to this song, and then I couldn’t listen to it without tearing up for awhile. I’ve only been able to listen to it again in the past couple of months, and I remember why I liked it in the first place.

Specifically, this verse hits me hard.

I know I can get so emotional
I’m grateful that you are someone to hold
Through all of these nights when I lay awake
Don’t know how much more I can take
All that I know is when you’re next to me
I can finally breathe

I’ve been thinking of getting it tattooed on me. Maybe that’s not that bad of an idea. I’ve been thinking about what kind of words I want on my body, and I’m leaning away from poetry since I don’t actually consume that much poetry. Lyrics, on the other hand, hit deep. I could live with these lyrics on my body for the rest of my life because it is reminiscent of a summer that was truly transformative with impact on the rest of my life. I feel like so much of the person I have become has been the result of things that have happened so recently, and I think I have encountered my final trajectory in life.

“Though all these nights when I lay awake.” I keep on repeating that line to myself. It truly captures such an integral part of me life — staying awake at night. It is not something that i want or don’t want; it is something that just is. It is night now, and I am awake. My antidepressants aren’t helping me sleep either because they have stimulant-like properties. In this new city, I don’t know how much more I can take. In some seasons, I feel like I could conquer in the world. In other times, like now, I feel like I am so helpless to my own emotions.

I don’t think things are going to change much from here. I can’t imagine that they do. I have become so secure in my identity to the point where it is hard for me to b influenced by other people at this point. I want to be changed, but I don’t know if I could still be changed. I think back in my life to everyone who has changed me. Some people I have changed in turn, and others I have not. There’s this imbalance that is at the center of all relationships — the assymetry of effect.

dreams

I feel like the one of the reasons I don’t write on this blog anymore is that I feel a stronger need to process what I feel in a more private way where I don’t feel I need to abstract all of my feelings in order to develop some sense of catharsis. I share this blog with enough close friends where if I added any details to my writing they would immediately know what or who I was referring to. I find that there’s something distinctly more effective about writing “I had a dream about X yesterday, who I haven’t talked to since Y” versus “I had a dream about someone I don’t talk to anymore.”

Anyways, I woke up at 2:41 AM from a dream I had about someone I don’t talk to anymore. Immediately, I pulled out my phone and started playing “Don’t Wanna Live Forever” because that was the first song that came into mind to capture my feelings. It’s not that that song had any particular sentimental attachment to this person, but I really liked the idea of not wanting to live, especially if someone else isn’t there. Then I scribbled down some notes about how I dreamed about needing a tattoo from this person, and how she drew it from my shoulder to my hand, which I also needed her to remove because I didn’t want any design that would not be covered by my dress shirts. Super weird dream.

I’m sure you could find some meaning in this dream. I’m not really searching for any beyond how silly it is that my professional anxieties surrounding how my boss might discover my tattoos seem to also have space in my dreams. Usually, I would take some time afterward to figure out what I was feeling, but instead, I pulled out a printed earnings call transcript from Bloomberg and began highlighting all the commentary I thought was relevant to get back to a client request later. I guess that’s adult life.

A couple of nights later, at 3:43 AM, I woke to a different dream. I also talked to a different girl I haven’t spoken to in a while and congratulated her on something (intentionally redacted, but very important within the dream). I wasn’t sure of the exact contents of our conversation, but I just remember bumping into her in a bathroom and chatting with her about a series of topics (not redacted, just forgot). We were able to laugh some stuff off about our past in a way I’m not too convinced we could do in real life. Not because anything traumatic happened, just because our intense connection just exists in the past now.

I used to hate having dreams like these because it just highlights how much my life has changed since I’ve been intimate with these people, but lately, I’ve started to appreciate these dreams for what they really are: an honest reflection of my feelings of loss.

In some ways, I find that dreams can be tremendously cathartic spaces, where I am able to rehash out some emotions I wasn’t sure I was feeling in an environment that is entirely authentic with how I continue to be affected by people in my past. In the conscious world, I have become more-or-less better at rejecting how I feel in the spirit of productivity. But the emotions that I feel after the dream — the bittersweet regret and longing — highlight how rare certain relationships were in my life, especially in retrospect, and how moving forward in my life means that losing another intimate side of myself I had with someone.

Different periods of my life have different coping mechanisms. During it was college, it was mostly writing because it’s the most accessible medium of creation at any given moment of time. I feel like I’ve gotten significantly less creative now after graduating college. Now that I have a Bloomberg Terminal, I guess my new favorite coping mechanism is reading 10-K’s and earnings call transcripts.

I don’t really like this phase in my life. It’s fine. I’m trying really hard to make it fine. I really want to like this phase in my life, but there’s something still lacking about it. I’m not sure if I feel as beautiful as I did before. I need a little more time to hash out some things before I reach a time in my life where I have to accept my life for what it is.

tuesday night

I’m starting to think I made the wrong decision in my life. I moved from New York, where I had a lot of friends, to San Francisco, where I had no friends. Why did I do it? New job. More money. Things that seem totally reasonable at the time until I am confronted with the reality of living in a city where I don’t know anybody. It isn’t a stretch to say that I have no friends in SF. Part of it was conscious choice. Part of it was just how things panned out. But here I am sitting on my bed after my first day of work, after I made a short trip to check out a gym, after I ate Chipotle after my workout, alone.

It is 8:39 PM and I am sitting alone in my studio apartment and bored. I am typing this up on Word instead of WordPress, which I usually use, because I haven’t committed to an ISP yet, and I don’t have internet. I have not put together my bedframe yet because I don’t own a screwdriver. My desk is unassembled for the same reason. I am waiting for my Amazon package containing a screwdriver to arrive in a day or so. My clothes are scattered across the floor because I don’t have any organizing bins. I’m unsure which of my clothes are clean clothes and which are worn. I’m playing My Chemical Romance because I feel alone and because I just got back from Firefly two days ago, where they headlined on Friday.

There isn’t any “depth” to this feeling like it had been in other times in my life. I’m not thinking about the cyclicality of relationships or the inevitability of loneliness or whatever else I was thinking in my junior year of college. All I have is the sensation of loneliness. I am feeling lonely without all the intellectual theorizing that have plagued my previous experiences. It is just me and my feeling. I don’t really feel the need to intellectualize my feelings. It is just a feeling, and that’s it all will be.

I notice myself relying more on imagery instead of theory now. I exist more in the world around me than I do in my own head. It keeps me grounded to my surroundings. It keeps me in touch with the earth when I feel like I am floating away. But I still feel as if I am floating. My feelings feel distant to me. It is so much effort to just try to feel what I am feeling. Why must I try so hard to stay attached to something that is a literal part of my extended being?

I have the sniffles. I am not crying. I am just sick.