Category: writing from college

the image of unlovability

I always say that I feel unloved.

This, naturally, hurts people who allegedly love me. And, because my expression of my own thoughts causes pain in others, most of the time, I just choose not to express my thoughts. I’d like to think that I care about my friends, which is why I choose not to intentionally hurt those around me, but sometimes, I feel as if their concern is just an attempt to construct me into their image of what they want as a friend. It is reductionist, almost. It is compiling all that is my existence, seeing it in its whole, and rejecting it because it does not fit their conception of their own conception of me. Nowhere in their concern of me is the act of validating the sentiments that I express. They see the expression of my thoughts, they reject it, and that is all she wrote.

It is clear that I do not love myself. I see no reason to love myself. Since I tend to conceptualize the world relative to myself, I tend to take my own subjective views on the world and apply them as truth. But, in the end, it is my truth. I do not attempt to apply my truth in the lives of others. And, so I wonder, why is it that everyone attempts to apply their truths to me?

My ideas belong in the minority. Most of the time, my ideas are exoticized to appeal to a mainstream audience. I’m a token sadboi among my peers, which is partially also my fault due to my own constructing when I had been searching for an identity that made sense of all my experiences. Most of the time, I play my ideas off like a joke because it is the only medium that makes sense to others who do not believe my ideas. I consider my ideas to be truth. I recognize that others may not consider my ideas to be truth, so I divulge my ideas in a harmless medium that is prone to exoticism but also more accessible and less strange to others. This is the trade off that I create. However, when I write, I offer the unadulterated version of what I preach.

When I write, I no longer give the same humorous image of sadness that I construct in my life. The show is what I present to others; the writing is what is behind the curtain. The stage is curated, presentable, and entertaining; the backstage is gross, ugly, and repulsive. I don’t show people the backstage very often. But, if someone wants to see the backstage, I don’t turn people down to see the backstage. Then, they would see the backstage, and they would reject the backstage. They would recoil and refuse to believe in the authenticity of the backstage. Yet, to me, as someone who manages the entire production, the backstage is far more real than whatever presentable image I false create for others. Yet, to them, as the audience who can only see the end product, the backstage represents the something that they cannot understand.

When people see something they cannot understand, they label it is strange. Then, they would try to reject its existence, appealing to the image of the stage that they have come to know. Everyone can appreciate a production of Swan Lake. The ballerinas are delicate, graceful. The show fits their understanding of ballet. But, when they go backstage and see the ballerinas taking off their ballet shoes, the sights of disfigured and injured toes repulses them. They cannot understand what they see, so they choose to not acknowledge that which they see. Not everyone can understand the

I sometimes think that I am just profoundly discomforted by the idea that someone could ever love me. Then, I would always think, why?

It seems like such a strange concept to me… that someone could like me, much less love me. Even the thought brings me profound discomfort.

Whenever someone would tell me that they like me, my first recourse would be to doubt their authenticity. They don’t mean what they say, or they don’t believe in what they say. If I could not convince myself to doubt their authenticity, then I would doubt their credibility. They do not know the meaning of liking someone, or they don’t know enough about me to like me. I am so convinced that if someone got to like me better, then they wouldn’t like me. It seems so intuitive to me that I have so little idea of why others cannot see it. Convincing others that they shouldn’t like me is the same as convincing others that the sky is blue; if they cannot see that the sky is blue, then there is nothing I could say or do that would convince them otherwise.

There is so much I want to say about this, obviously because it causes some distress among my friends, but there are so many limitations in terms of how I want to say the things that I want to say. It is an example of either getting it or not getting it. There is so little that I could say to convince others of the convictions that I hold about myself. They are points of my life that are not negotiable with others. This is my life. I dictate how I perceive myself in my life, and I’m not interested in the opinions of others to tell me how I should view myself or live my life. This is my life. I don’t want others meddling in my life. I am not interested in the judgment of others nor am I interested in changing myself to fit their conception of what is a “healthy” life. This is my life.

So often have I noticed that people don’t see me. They see what they want to see out of me. I’m an image. I suppose that what I am feeling can be applied to others as well. I’m sure that I am not the only person in the world that feels that the world does not see them for who they are. But, when the image is challenged, the relationship goes sour. The image can only exist as long as the image in which the image is based on is upheld. But, as reality goes, the enforcement of the image is contingent on a deviation from the entropic nature of relationships. The image is only sustained through the will. And, because the image can only exist as a contradiction, then the image is destined to falter with time. Such is the conflicting nature of knowing and understanding.

When I say that I want to kill myself, I really mean that I want to kill myself. This, naturally, concerns my friends, who supposedly do not want me to kill myself. But, honestly, there is a part of me that doesn’t care what they think. If I were to kill myself, the least thing I would be concerned about is the feelings of my friends. If I were to kill myself, I probably had a good reason to kill myself, and that reason is beyond something that my friends can comprehend. They only can see the side of me that I present to them. The reality of my life is not something that anybody can comprehend because, as per the nature of comprehension, we can only comprehend based on our existing comprehension.

If I die, I die, and that’s all she wrote.

convinced / unconvinced

Sad. So sad. Is life.

Where is the truth behind it all?

I just want to disappear. Wretched is the world. Wretched is me. A world where it exists but not to exist. Where delirium is clarity. Where life is a disparity. It is a sick joke. Lifeless. Once more, I enter. Lost. Wondering. So lost, am I? The life that I lead. The life that once was. Where is the connection between that which and that which is not? It was about this time when the fault escaped. It was about this time when all that was became all that was not. It was the life that I had led so long ago. How much I wish to return to that life, when it was not sadness that prevailed. When I did not hurt others. When I did not hurt myself.

Such is the life. The happiness. The sadness. The windows never stood so bare. In front of me. I wish to die. I see the reflection. I wish to die. My reflection. A sight of sorrow. A ghostly past. Future. Never once there stood the image of that which I could not be. It is the image. It is the mirage. Where happiness once stood. Dead. In front of me. Dead. In front of me. Dead. I wish to die. The happiness. The sadness. The future. What future? The past. The past. The past. How I wish I could return to the past. The past is a time of absence. Of sadness. It was a time that was. I miss the time that was. When happiness did not exist in the past tense. Or, at least, what I thought to be happiness. I never knew so much. I never knew I would know so much. I wish I could stop knowing.

The darkness. I love the darkness. When did I start to love the darkness. I wish I could stop loving the darkness. But the darkness me. How could not love something that is me. How could I love something that is me? Contradiction. The hurt. I hurt. So often, I feel as if the sadness I experience is the result of the hurt that I had inflicted on others. But, then I reflect on the nature of hurting others, and I wonder what had been the cause it all. Do I hurt others because I experience sadness, or do I experience sadness because I hurt others. Even so, which came first? Did the sadness or the retribution come first? I wonder. I will never know. I suspect it is one of those mysteries in the universe that will never be answered. That is the way. That is the way.

I’m sorry, really. To the universe. I’m sorry for existing.

Lacrymosa. The rose. I miss the rose. I pity all those who come in contact with me. You thought that I was a band-aid, but all I do is leave scars. You thought that because I was willing to listen to you that I could solve your problems. But, you’re wrong. I am not the solution. I am the problem.

I try to be honest. I tell people that I will hurt them when I come into contact with them. Some listen, as they should. But then, some don’t. They should, but they don’t. So often I yearn for someone to love me, but then, sometimes, I would think about what that would mean. It is impossible for someone to love me. But, even if it were possible, I pity the fool who would want to. I really do. I want to feel loved. By others. So little, however, do I consider its implications. Because, to me, it is quite simple, the act of loving me is a hurtful act. Cuts turn into scars. Tears turn into art. That is the type of person I am. I am someone who wants to be loved. I am someone who hurts others. There is so little time in my life when I would be genuinely concerned for the hurtful actions I have done. When indifference did not prevail.

Life is so sad. So sad is life.

Quiet. I miss the quiet. The world may shatter itself, but I prevail. Just me, and my sadness. The shattering. I miss the soft strum of a guitar that plays when the end is near. I miss the end. I miss the beginning. How long ago? I was so different. Did I recognize myself? Who am I? I have so little idea anymore. This concept of identity… why would I even bother? The bass is near. Bump. Boom. Bump. Softly. In the darkness. The strumming continues. The only certainty I have is the construction of myself relative to the ends that I have experienced. Or, is that necessary at all? Is the self only constructed relative to the conclusion? Because, if we find ourselves in the process, then how can we contextualize the process until the process has reached its end? The end. The end. The end. The process that leads to the end. The act of contextualizing can only exist with context. The end.

I yearn. It is so simple, yet so far away. So far away. I miss it. The sound. The smoothness. I haven’t felt the smoothness for so long. The world is jagged. My hands are jagged. Sometimes, I feel like the act of touching others always leads to pain. My jagged hands in a jagged world. The softness of others. How much do I want to be a part of that. But, I have not been chosen to be a part of that. My jagged hands. I can only hurt those around me. I want to touch others, but the only way to touch others is to hurt others. But, I still want to touch others, regardless, whether that would hurt others or not. Contact. those poor souls who come in contact with me. Sad. When they sought salvation, all I can offer is damnation. The world. Hateful. Is the world.

Until we die. Die, die, die! I laugh. I am in a dream, aren’t I? I wish. This has always been a dream. I don’t hurt others. Others do not hurt me. Die, die, die! I want ot wake up. How do I wake up? It was in inception, wasn’t it? How do you wake up from a dream? The kick. Someone kick me please. It looks like no one is coming to kick me. So, it would seem that I am going to continue existing in this dream world for some time. I wish I wouldn’t exist in this dream world. I don’t want to live in this dream world. I am so sad. I don’t want to be in this sad dream world. The world. Is it sad? Is it just my dream? I don’t want to be in this world. Please wake me up. Please wake me up. I don’t want to be in this world. Please. Wake. Me. Up.

How is it that we convince ourselves that we aren’t in a dream world. What did Leonardo DiCaprio do in Inception? He died, didn’t he? He and his wife. They died together to challenge the world that they were in. They were convinced that they were not in a world that was real. They put their heads on a set of railroad tracks and let a train run over them. Then, they woke up. In the real world. I also want to wake up in the real world. This is not the real world. This is not real. I am not real. this world cannot be real. Wake me up. I have experienced something real, and I am not experiencing something real right. Wake me up. this world cannot be real. I am convinced that this world is not real. I don’t want this world to be real. I don’t. I wish that I could wake up. In another world.

The world and I. ‘Til death due us part.

what happened to the l -word

The past, the concept.

I used to say the word “love” a lot more sparingly. I wonder what happened.

I don’t reflect on the past as much as I used to. But, the other day, I finished the book I had been working on early on my commute home. I still had a good 30 minutes before I reached Church Ave. station, and I was not in the mood to re-read dense chapters on financialization. I was also quite bored with the techno album I was listening to. So, I pulled out my phone and began to flip through some photos.

This was a horrible decision.

I remember during my freshman summer, when I had just arrived in my grandparent’s condominium in Beijing without television or internet, I had stooped into a rattling boredom. Back then, I pulled out my phone, too. Within a few hours, I flipped through all of my photos and re-read all of my text messages. I had exorbitant amounts of time to myself, and it was a time that allowed me to re-evaluate all of my connections with other people. I didn’t feel alone back then. Even though I had around lost around 30 Snapchat streaks when I emerged from the plane, I knew that I still had people to talk to when I returned from China. It was a crisis, but it was a crisis that had been contained within the infinite time that I had.

Likewise, I also had a crisis. This time, it was in a subway car, which is not a very good place to have a crisis. I wanted to write about it, of course, but I didn’t have a computer. Naturally, I wrote a poem on my phone’s Notes app:

I used to sign off my letters

Love,
Grant

I don’t anymore.

I don’t any
more.

#badtwitterpoetry

It is a word that feels quite foreign at this point in my life. I don’t love. I haven’t been ever able to love. This makes sense in retrospect, but there was only a part of my life when I believed that I was capable of loving others and that other were capable of loving me. I no longer believe what I used to. Experience tends to do that to me. Experience has shown me that there is no such thing as love. Naturally, since my vocabulary exists to shape my thoughts into sentiments, the word seems to have slipped away from my vocabulary. I no longer casually tell others that I love them. I no longer am able to express myself in this facet as I once could because this a part of me that no longer exists. That is the nature of things.

There was this one time when I accidentally said, “I love you.”

It was when I spoke using the word “love” as opposed to the word “luv”. It was the only moment in my history of saying that I meant that I loved someone with the full gravity behind the word. I took it back quickly and pretended as if nothing happened. It was an embarrassing moment at the time, as if I were embarrassed to be in love, if I was in love at all. I wonder if that was the most authentic moment I have ever felt in my life. There are plenty of moments when I do not say something that I am supposed to, but there are so few moments in my life when I inadvertently say things without meaning to do so. It was a moment when I truly lost control over myself. Was it my emotions speaking back then. Was it something more real, if it was real at all?

It was a time that seems to have passed by so long ago. The world I live in currently was not the world I had live back then. The sky is quite grey nowadays. The sky was blue back then… a dark vibrant blue. It was full of sadness and life. Now, all I feel is emptiness. It is a different sky, with a different color, with a different set of eyes that gaze upon it.

I am so tired nowadays. My eyes are tired. I am so tired. The words I speak are one that comes from a tired man. I can finally understand how some people could live their lives having so little ambition or desire. I don’t want to be this way. I no longer have the strength to look up at the grey sky. It is the same sky, of course, but it is a sky that remains the same while I have changed. There is a sort of infinite stillness that exists if you take the universe on aggregate. The world is moving, of course, but it produces movement in a way that aggregates into no movement. In a closed system, energy cannot be created or destroyed. I would imagine that Newton’s Laws of Motion would follow a similar rule. On aggregate, the universe has not moved. The world has not changed. It is I who has changed. But, unfortunately, it is not change for the better.

The other day, my friend had pointed to a series of modernist buildings between the Salesforce and the UBS towers on the Avenue of the Americas. He didn’t like them. He thought that they looked oppressive. I agreed and disagreed. I also thought that they looked oppressive. I loved them.

I don’t know.

It is something I have said all my life. But, here at this point in my life, I feel as if there is little point in knowing anything anymore. It is a time of simultaneous assurance and uncertainty. Professionally, I know that I want to work in a company that address political and economic topics with econometrics. That is what I know given the limitations of what I know. Personally, I have accepted that the permanence I have chased for all my life is not real. It is a facade created to keep me sane while I continue to dispense the rest of my time on this lonely planet. I wonder if I would return to the illusion when I could, when I still believed in love to liberate me from my sadness. It seems so long ago that there is little point in thinking about it. But, alas, here I am, thinking about it.

I wonder if I could ever return to that moment, when I said the l-word for the first time ever, truly meaning what I said. I wonder if I could feel like that again, when I could let my emotions take over me, feeling something more real than whatever emptiness that I am experiencing right now. I miss the softness of that blue bed, when I uttered the l-word for the first time ever.

I wonder if it will also be the last.

perfect love

I keep on wondering whether all my life I wanted to be in love with an idea of perfection. After all, there are plenty of perfect people out in the world, all with a level of perfection more perfect than the last. But then, sitting here on a steel table on the lawn in front of the Barnard College Library, I realize that that perfection is something that can be taken away. I don’t look for perfection anymore because there is nothing that can capture the essence of a perfection that I cannot even conceptualize myself. It is my perfection, but I don’t even know what is my perfection, even though it is my perfection.There is the ideal, of course, of what I idealize. But, given the nature of idealization, it is the idea itself that exists in the form of perfection. When the idea is consecrated in to an individual, it no longer is the ideal idea that it had been idealized to be. The consecration, by nature, reduces the ideal to a form. The form is not perfect because it is not the ideal. The form is human, and it is human to be imperfect. It would seem unjust, therefore, to characterize the human form into an ideal because the human form is not an idea. The human form is tainted with imperfection, yet there is so much expectation for the human form to conform to an ideal. Why is that the case? A love sustained through longing — that was how I had characterized the relationship that had defined most of my conception of love. It seems that in our attempts to idealize the individual that cannot exist in the form of an idea while retaining the full reality of their form, we construct an image around a feeling that becomes more real to us than the actual individual existing in their form. The reduction of reality and the privileging of idealization creates a separate reality that becomes more real than the reality we occupy. The metaphysical explanation, however, challenges the intuitive explanation of the ideal love. Yet, what are the origins of the intuitive underpinnings of our conceptions of love? It is certainly a belief that I have had for all of my life, which causes me to believe that my explanation is flawed in some fashion. The nature of truth is that it defies logic because logic is an imperfect medium in observing truth. It is impossible, however, to differentiate the difference between truth and the influence of experience and culture in determining the validity of a perspective becoming objective. I still find it hard to convince myself otherwise because it ingrained within my assumptions about love. Where do these assumptions come from? Yet, It seems that I have reached a point in my lie where I have realized that I will never attain perfection, nor is perfection something I want reflected in others. It is not necessarily that It was the idea that I was constantly striving towards an ideal more perfect than it was before that drove me. It was the idea that the people in my life were more perfect than me. But, no, that is not what I want.

I want something beautiful. 

the inevitable fall from attraction

So, love, the concept.

I recently told someone that I liked them.

Someone recently said to me, “Relationships with temporary, but friends are permanent.”

Spot. The. Connection.

I disagreed with her, but I said that I agreed out of politeness. This is not freshman year anymore, and I am able to take the hint of a rejection when it is presented to me. If this were freshman year, I probably would’ve continued to pursue her because there would be some part of me that believed that I could change her mind, which would follow with the same patterns of deflection. But, seeing as through I cannot even reflect on freshman year without cringing my eyes, I have learned how to accept a rejection and move on. This was a rejection.

The rejection made me realized how detached I was from the universe defining my teenage years. Or, more realistically, my entire life. I have not been rejected by someone I was really into since the summer coming into my sophomore year. It has made me forget that getting along with someone is different than being attracted to someone. It is a fact that I had ingrained in my understanding of the world before, but now it seems like a foreign thought. In that sense, I suppose this past year had been graced by the universe in some regards. The feeling of rejection. doesn’t feel the same as it has previously. It is far less intense, which I suppose is a sign of maturity. Or emotional indifference.

This girl has told me that relationships are temporary, and I agree that relationships are temporary, but I certainly don’t believe that friendships are permanent. The two exist in similar planes; both are structures of love. If anything, relationships and friendships exist in the same spectrum, except relationships have a higher intensity. The amount of time that is spent with someone in a relationship would further any connection regardless of the pre-existing circumstances. The amount of time spent with someone in a friendship in incomparable than the amount of time spent with someone in a relationship. Relationships have time commitments. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be called a relationship.

Once the two reach a certain threshold, it is destined that they devolve into destruction.

It is like running a marathon without lubricating your nipples. At first, it is fine. When you train for a couple of miles each day, the chafing on your nipples is tolerable. It is unnoticeable. But, when the objective is the long run, as it is in a relationship, the chafing amplifies. While the chafing in the first couple of miles is tolerable, it becomes irritating as the miles stack up. Soon, the nipples become sensitive, and every subsequent rub against a shirt causes profound pain when it had been a mere caress a couple of miles ago. Similar to the nature of relationships, the longer you run without a break, the more the chafing continues. Sooner or later, your nipples bleed, and you reach you limit. That is the end.

This characterizes relationships to me. This is why I agree that relationships are temporary. Sooner or later, breaks will be taken. But, friends do not follow the same laws as relationships. There exist breaks in friendships. But the fundamental structural issues are the same. Relationships are also different than friendships in the variety of sex that is involved. It is sex, but it is not the same sex. There is a difference, yet there is not a difference. It is everything but also nothing. There is something that exists in relationships that does not exist in friendships. Is a sense of vulnerability? But not a emotional type of vulnerability… more like a sexual variety of vulnerability that revolves around intense feelings of sexual love. Who knows?

Two and half years ago, I would have thought that any friend that had the misfortune of being the subject to my affections would resolve in the termination of the friendship. Either my affections are not returned, and then the friendship is terminated, or my affections are returned, and then the friendship is terminated. The idea goes: regardless of the whatever circumstances surrounded the preconditions of a friendship, the natural course of action results is cessation. The end is either short and not sweet, or it stretches to be sweet at first before devolving into violence. Either way, so my toxic tendencies go that results in destruction at its inception.

The moment feelings of attraction arise is the moment that any sense of permanence is relinquished. Friendship dies in the arms of attraction. Once the attraction exist, it can not un-exist. It is the first domino that sets into motion a cascade of other falling domino. It is the arbitrary stimuli that leads a closed system into turbulence. It is the inevitable conflict that leads to an inevitable tragedy.

In December 2016, I wrote this about my freshman year crush:

So here’s the truth about the friend zone: You can’t be friends with someone you have feelings for.

Because you’re never going to think of them as a friend. You’re always going to always want more from the friendship—more time together, more deep conversations, more moments you can share between just the two of you. You’re going to pick your best outfits out of your closet when you know you are going to see her, hoping that she would notice. You’re going always treat them more than a friend because they’ll always be more than a friend to you.

Because you’ll never move on. You’re going to think that they’re the only person that really understands you to the level you want to be understood. You’re going to think that you’re perfect for each other, that you’ll eventually end up together, that everything that has happened up until now is just the beginning of a fairy tale that ends with a happily ever after. You’re always going to wonder what why things did not work out and what you could have done better. You’ll always try to define yourself through her and shape yourself through her. 

Because you’ll always hope for more. You’ll always hope that those 1 a.m. conversations about your insecurities and anxieties will lead to something more than just 1 a.m. conversations about your insecurities and anxieties. You’ll hope that those nights when you lay on your bed imagining the possibility of a future together—just the two of you, hands held, walking together, in the countryside, down an empty dirt road, towards a fading purple sunset, with crickets chirping in the background—will be more than just a fantasy. You’ll hope that some day, she’ll like you back the same way that you like her.

But all of these thoughts, will just be thoughts. Nothing more.

God, this was so fucking cringy to read. My first crush.

There is some truth to what I said. Even though I draw on cliche images and entitled undertones, I still have not been able to challenge the inevitability for attraction to devolve into resentment. I may have not been able to articulate it at the same, but this was the sentiment that I have been trying to capture back then. I was not able to maintain a friendship with a girl that i had developed a crush on freshman year. It ended poorly, like all of my experiences with love thus far. So who am I to say that I can do the same at this point in my life? Who am I to say that I can change?

I wonder if I am still the same person as I was two and a half years ago. Quite a bit has happened since then, of course, but there seems to be some truths that have not. I am not any better at love now than I was freshman year. I still am attached to people who have no interest in me. I still hurt those who love me more than I deserve. There is very little consistency in my life, except, sadness, of course, but this is also a consistency in my life. If anything, it is the fact that I have realized and accepted this as a consistency in my life that causes me so much sadness.

Now, it seems that I have gone full circle once again. I am my same freshman self again in the same situation. Will anything change, or will it always be this way?

the third clarity

Sometimes, I would look into the past and realize that it’s not there anymore. Nothing that I had ever experienced is real. All the experiences that supposedly compose of my memory isn’t real. I have never felt loved. I have never felt happy. All that is real is the sadness that lays ahead.

I always reflect on the past, as if the only way I could relive the happiness that I had experienced in the past was to reflect on it. Or write about it. But, now, I have reached another point in my life. There is nothing about my past that was real. There is no point in reflecting on the experienced in my life that aren’t real. I used to consider my memories to be precious. After all, my memories are my memories. The experiences that compose my memories supposedly have shaped me into the person that I am right now. This is a belief that I have had for so long. I would treasure my past memories for the pure reason that it is one of the few things in the world that seem inseparable to my identity.

But I know now. There is nothing real about the past. There is nothing real about the past. There is nothing real about the past. The past isn’t real.

There was a part of my life when I genuinely believed that there was a reason that my existence is justified. Otherwise, I am just floating around in the world without purpose. Not that there is anything wrong with living without purpose. I always thought the idea was purposeless. And so, I have always strove to create meaning in my own life. For a long time, I thought that I could derive meaning in my life through success. Then, after that phase, I thought I could derive meaning through making a positive contribution unto the lives of others. Then, after that phase, I thought I could derive meaning in my life through loving and being loved. Now, I have come to the conclusion that I have been deceiving me this entire time.

The world has revealed three truths to me,

  • that I will never be successful for I am inadequate.
  • that I will never do good to others for I am wicked.
  • that I will never be loved for I am unlovable.

It is a realization that has come from a long line of other realizations and will follow with more realizations, I’m sure. The world has rejected me. This I know. But, sometimes, amidst the speed of modern life, I forget to realize. I fill my life with enough distractions to separate my mind from the lucidity that I am experiencing right now. This is a tendency, an instinct, and I have no control over my lack of will to exercise power against my tendencies towards deviating from a state of sadness. I am so sad right now, but it is clear. I see the landscape of my life after the illusory cover had been peeled off. I see my life. It is disgusting. My life is disgusting. But, I see the it all in its realness. It is not beauty. It is vile. I am disgusting. I see the truth.

I’m sure in a little while, I’ll find another reason to live. This is irrational nature of the rational human spirit. It could take the form of art or whatever. I’m sure there are plenty of authors and artists who have articulated a reason to live better than me, and I’ll appropriate one of those ideas for my own life. I know this as a certainty. But, right now, I am a moment of clarity, when my tendency to rationalize my own experiences has not re-framed my life in the illusion of meaning. I am at a moment of clarity right now, when I understand the extent that I have been rejected by the universe. I finally understand that my wickedness has made me impossible to love. I hope this clarity will carry into the future, but I already know it won’t. But, right now, at this moment in time, I know. I know that I don’t deserve to be loved.

It was somewhere during my freshman year when I realized that I don’t deserve any of the achievements that I have accomplished in my life. As a result, I don’t think about my success much anymore. I don’t deserve any of my success. What is the point of attempting to quantify my own success when the answer is already present? What is the point of trying to prove myself to anything when I already understood that there is no point in attempting to challenge the unfettered reality of determination? I was not destined to be successful. I don’t deserve to be successful. It is not subject to repetition because I already know this. This is truth. And, once I understand truth, there is little point in challenging something to be objectively true.

I only realized that I was not a good person recently. It was one of my friends that had brought up the concept over brunch did I learn to apply the idea to my own life. For so much of my life, I had convinced myself that I wanted to make a positive contribution to to the world through public policy or international development or whatever. I defaulted to the idea that if I choose a career that created a positive externality to the world, then I would be able to justify to myself that I was a good person. After all, isn’t that how you quantify good — through actions? Perhaps actions could be a standard, but this standard does not apply to me. I am not a good person. That is truth. No matter how many positive externalities I create in my life, I will never be able to redeem the wickedness of my nature. I am evil.

Each time I had reached a disillusionment, I found another way to redeem myself through another means of pursuing meaning. Starting my junior year of college, I had been obsessed with this idea of love. I thought that love was the only idea that could redeem all of my inadequacy and wickedness that I have been born with. After all, when you are in a state of love, then. And, for so long, I had convinced myself that what I felt at the time was love. But, now I realize that I was, once again, lying to myself. There is no such thing as love, at least, not for me. Love is an idea reserved for individuals who deserve to live. I, on the other hand, do not deserve to live. Until I find another reason to live. Lying to myself. Before, once again, my illusion is shattered.

I’ve been listening to this song a lot lately:

Rushing through my head and I wish that I were dead
I say, “Where do I go again? Where do I go again?”
I can never find, I know I am never right
I say, “Where do I go again? Where do I go again?”

Vague 003, “Where Do I Go?”

I don’t know where to go. So often do I wish that I were dead. There is very little that is keeping me alive at this point, except instinct. It is a question that constantly repeats in my head, “Where do I go again” I ask myself, “Where do I go again?” as if I once knew where I would ago. But, when I realize that I had never knew, I ask myself, “Where do I go again?” “Where do I go again” is a question that does not have an answer because the creation of the question itself is based off an ontological fault. It is an impossible question, “Where do I go again?”, and there is no answer that could resolve the fundamental schism that is located within the question itself. It is a guiding question, an question without end. It is life. “Where do I go again?”

Quite a haunting question. Innit.

“Where do I go again?”
“Where do I go again?”
“Where do I go again?”
“Where do I go again?”
“Where do I go again?”
“Where do I go again?”
“Where do I go again?”

compartmentalization

I don’t really talk about my love life to my closest friends. Whenever they would ask, I simply reply that I do not have much going on regardless of whether it is true or not. It has been an instinct for some time now. I do, however, talk about my love life with friends that I have not seen in a year. Sometimes. Only if asked. I don’t really know why I am willing to discuss my love life, which is suppose to be a personal matter, with individuals who are not an active part of my life over my close friends. There is a part of me that thinks that the mere mention of my own love life is a sign of weakness, as if I cared about something such as love. Of course, I do care about love. But, in terms of willing myself to a state of vulnerability, I still have a hard time justifying that to myself.

It was a conversation topic that had come up the other day. It was with one of those friends that I see once per semester. The topic of love came up. I had just given her some recent updates in my love life. She, likewise. We spoke in the abstract, without names or any identifying information regarding the individuals that we had just discussed in detail. I didn’t mind, of course; I was only interested speaking in and hearing about the abstract. Love, in the abstract, is the only conversation topic that never gets old to me. Love, in the specific, becomes stale and irritating quite quickly, and I do not have as much patience as I did a couple years ago to hear about a detailed recount of love, But, love, in the abstract, is infinitely interesting to me.

At one point, we began to question why we speak about love only through abstracted lenses that extracts the sentimental qualities of love. Or, in other words, why love only exists in reflection and not in observation. To me, it always seemed that the concept of love is more real than the feeling of love, which is why I could engage in reflecting so much about love without showing the same enthusiasm in real love of being in love. I had always considered the act of loving to be a private act, and I do not think there was ever a time in my life where I deviated from this belief. But, then again, there is a difference between love being a private act as opposed to a personal act. To this day, I still have difficulty distinguishing them.

I have memories of being in love. These are memories that I reflect upon. Quite often, if I am being honest. It is all that remains of the concept. But, if we’re referring to the actual process of being in love, I often give off an aesthetic of indifference. Even though I justify my own indifference as the act of conforming to the same indifference from universe that I have experienced, there is still a part of me that feels wrong for being so indifferent to individuals who care about me so much. It is a contradictory notion that I do not yet understand myself. Yet, I also feel oddly justified in behaving the way I do even if it leads to collateral damage to the individuals who care for me. Logically, I understand that I should feel bad. But only logically.

When I reflect on my past experiences of love, I could not help but to notice a trend. None of my friends knew much about my romantic partners. It would take a few weeks for me to even mention their existence at all, which is motivated out of courtesy to my romantic partners and not the desire to do so. It is a judgement of logical necessity. And, even when my friends were aware of their existence, they would only be able to conceptualize their existence and not observe their presence because I would never simultaneously hang out with my friends and romantic partners. They would exist on two separate spheres of existence, unable to interact with one another. There would be the platonic sphere, and then there would be romantic sphere.

I don’t know the etymological origins of the word compartmentalize. Whenever I would hear the word, I tend to think of the Titanic. Or an explosion. It is, above all, a containment. But it is a containment resulting from an understanding that a catastrophe is imminent. If there is no disaster, then there would be no need for compartmentalization. If there is no thought of disaster, then there would be no need for compartmentalization. The need to compartmentalize only comes from the experience of the disaster. It is an insight that is gained from experience, and it is an instinct that results from a series of happenings that cannot be reversed.

My experiences in love have informed me of the need to compartmentalize. If we fall in love with, on average, three people in our lifetime, I wonder if that means I have already reached my quota of the total amount of people that I will ever love. It certainly seems so. I find it quite difficult nowadays to replicate the same intensity in my feelings as I had a couple of years ago or even a couple of months ago. I am no longer able to approach my romantic encounters without a need to compartmentalize because my experiences had informed me of the need to do so. From my experiences, I have constructed a definition of love that necessitates the devolution into violence. The disaster is coming. The disaster is inevitable. To me, compartmentalization is a natural recourse to an ontological certainty.

There is the social containment that confines my romantic partners and friends from ever interacting with each other. But then, there is also the mental containment that prevents my friends and romantic partners from ever reaching a level of emotional intimacy that would necessitate the merger of those two spheres of life. If anything, compartmentalization is a hedge against the possibility of emotional collateral damage that is inevitable whenever two objects dabble with the violence of love.

I tend to conceptualize my willingness to invest in relationships similar to my willingness to invest in the stock market. By the nature of real business cycles, I know that there is going to be a recession every 10-15 years. After understanding this information, I could have two possible responses: I could invest my savings into the stock market and liquidate my assets before the start of the recession, or I could not invest in the stock market at all and keep my savings. Seeing as though I had already lost $100 when I had invested my savings from my freshman internship into ETFs (and liquidated in January 2019, which was the lowest point in that fiscal year), I have very little faith in my ability to pull out before economic crashes. Similar to the economy, I have very little faith in my abilities to pull out my emotional attachment whenever I feel that the relationship is destined for a decline. I know that a recession will hit; I just don’t know when.

If I do not invest in the stock market at all — or if I do not invest my emotions into a relationship — then it is certain that I will not lose money. Sure, inflation will lower the value of my existing savings, but losing 2 percent per year is always better than losing an additional 10 percent from a faulty investment decision. Besides, if it comes to it, I can always further hedge through investing in treasury bonds or the volatility index. Similarly, there are other means of retaining emotional security such as spending more time with close friends or engaging with hobbies. There are safe ways of retaining emotional capital without the depreciation of emotional assets. There is only a very finite amount of emotional capital that I am willing to invest in a relationship. I know that there is a recession coming, and these are emotional assets that I am willing to throw away.

If disaster is certain, then compartmentalization is necessary. If the romantic and social spheres are intertwined, then the inevitable detonation in the romantic sphere is bound to spread into the social sphere and wreck havoc. Since the end of one part of my life does not need to mean the end of another part of my life, it is only natural that they are separated.

mid-july

Hot summer nights, mid July
When you and I were forever wild
The crazy days, city lights
The way you’d play with me like a child

Lana Del Rey, “Young and Beautiful”

Lately, whenever I get home from work, I would sit down, still business casual, pull out my guitar and sing “Young and Beautiful” in the silence. It is that time of the year.

As I approach closer towards mid-July, the sentimental feelings that the song captures slowly simmer towards a boil. Singing “Young and Beautiful” in my bedroom is the only way for me to reclaim the memories that the sentiments that are attached to my memories. It is a way for me to re-live, and perhaps re-claim, the memories that have shaped so much of identity since. Because, although the moment lives in the past, the memory of the moment could continue to be replicated and experienced. I frequently find myself trying to reclaim the past through mediums such as singing “Young and Beautiful” in my bedroom.

I would fade into my life, and then, sometimes, I would wake up unaware of how long time has passed. It was June a few moments ago, and now it is July. It is the beginning of July, slowly transitioning into mid-July.

The air has gotten quite hot, especially during the day. I have my fan blow air throughout my room to counter the stuffiness. But, during the day, I am usually too stressed to feel my own sadness. It is only during the nights that I become sad enough to sing to myself. The fan still blows during the night because I have not turned the fan off during the day. I do not leave my room much nowadays, so I need the fan to to continue to aerate the room as long as I occupy it. But, during the hours before I go to sleep, which I consider to be peak sadboi hours, I cannot help but to reflect sadly upon the memories that I have no hope in reclaiming. And, in terms of sentimental value, there is none that exceeds the magnitude of “Young and Beautiful”.

What a rarity is it — happiness. Or, to put it more accurately, that which is not sadness.

It isn’t that happiness has been an exclusive emotion that I feel during the summers, however; I have experienced both profound happiness and sadness during my summers. I often wonder if the majority of my life, at least defined through my memories, is captured through my summers. Whenever I would listen to Spotify’s “Summer Rewind” playlist, I would truly be truly be triggered by the sheer amount of memories that each of those songs contains. In my “Summer Rewind” playlist, there is “Paris” by The Chainsmokers. Of fucking course. There is also “Firestone” by Kygo. Another classic. Don’t forget “Lacrymosa” by Evanescence. Yikes!

Someone that I had met awhile back had described his understanding of spectrum of reality as a spectrum of intensity in the perception of experiences. If I were to use his framework to describe my own life, then it would seem that mid-July is the time when I am the most real. It is the time of mid-July that captures the majority of my memories because memories, of course, are subject to intensity. In that sense, mid-July, to me, seems like a longer time period to me than the entire season of winter. Since I tend to organize my memories relative to their imprint on my perceptions, it is mid-July that takes up the most amount of space in the limited storage I have in my memories. It is a few weeks, but it is also a life that I had. It doesn’t feel like my life.

Mid-July is the time of the year when I feel I simultaneously exist the most and exist the least. I find it quite difficult to experience mid-July as I am experiencing it, but the time period certainly lives quite a while in my memory. In this sense, it seems to me that mid-July is more of a dream than an actual moment in time. I would wake up from mid-July as I would wake up in a dream. It would be December. Or January. I would be sad, as I am always, but especially when the coldness settles in. It is only during those slow winter months do I yearn for the experience that I had never experienced in mid-July. It is a moment that I have experienced, of course, but it is also a moment that I have not. The only proof that I have that mid-July ever happened to me is in my memories.

This mid-July that I am experiencing right now is one of the more sad mid-July’s in my life. I have already experienced the saddest mid-July that I ever will experience, and I have also experienced the happiest mid-July of my life. All of the other mid-July’s go somewhere in between. But, reflecting on the experienced that I have had thus far in the summer, I would guess that this summer doesn’t go into the positive end of the spectrum. It has been quite a sad summer thus far, from what I feel that I feel; I can never perceive my experiences accurately. Knowing myself, I have little idea if I am, yet again, just lying to myself. I don’t recall that my happy summers feeling happy when I was in the midst experiencing them.

What do I want in my life right now? Do I want anything in my life right now? No, I know what I want in my life right now. But what I want is not something that can be given to me. I used to think that mid-July can provide for me what I want, but it seems that lately I realize that I have put to much reliance on mid-July to save me. I find it funny that the nature of want is the fact that you cannot have what you want. Because, if you have what you want, then you would no longer want what you cannot have. In that sense, my assessment of my current condition is that I know that I want. I have wanted the same things for as long as I can remember. But I also remember that it is so seldom that I am able to achieve that which I want. My current situation, I’d imagine, is no different from the past. I will continue to want.

I wonder if why mid-July is such a powerful time for me is the fact that I was able to attain what I have always wanted to attain during mid-July. It seems like a coincidence that mid-July would provide for me when winter will not. I wonder what that is. Whatever it is, it has made me not sad, for a time. But mid-July has also given me insurmountable sadness. For those moments that I was especially sad during mid-July, I wonder if that was because mid-July often invites introspection in a clarity that had been previously inaccessible. I wonder if it was only during mid-July did I see myself clearly for the first time ever, and when I saw what I was, I rejected myself for the ugly creature that I was. I wonder if it was during mid-July that I accepted that I was not chosen to be beautiful.

When I listen to “Young and Beautiful” now, I feel old. There was perhaps a few moments in my life where I had felt simultaneously young and beautiful, and those moments passed through my consciousness so quickly. Sometimes, I delve into my own memories and question if those moments were even real. Like the song “Young and Beautiful”, they both are a representation of an idea that had existed or never existed. It is both a story and an image. And, when I perceive my own memories, I cannot help but to believe that my own memories are subject to fabrication. Is is the moments that I have reflected upon so often that I question if they are real at all in the first place.

What do I want to do now? I don’t know, in a larger sense. But I have fantasies of living in the mountains and slowly dying in the cold far from society. I want to wake up early and go to sleep early, like I am doing now. I want to eat unflavored oatmeal for breakfast, like I am doing now. I am the old person that I had always feared to be. This was not the self that I had envisioned for myself a mere couple of years ago. I remember, during freshman year of college, I wanted to be young and beautiful forever. It was the time when I had discovered “Young and Beautiful” for the first time ever, and I wanted to be young and beautiful forever. That was a mid-July in the past. It is a different mid-July now.

Did I genuinely believe that I was beautiful back then? Probably not. I would imagine there was a part of me that unconvincingly attempted to lie to myself, but I had always known that I was not beautiful. I was not young either, although I think I did not realize that to a lesser extent. It is the same now, I’d imagine. I am still not young, and I am not getting any younger than I was a year ago. I am still not beautiful, and I will never become beautiful because I was not chosen to be beautiful. This is and was the way of the world, but it seems that it has taken me at least mid-July’s since that year I had discovered “Young and Beautiful” for the first time to truly accept my ugliness. It is hot. It is summer. It is night.

Hot summer nights, mid-July.

an object in motion

I once asked my friend why the melancholy disposition was considered to be sin as opposed to a source of religious truth after the eighteenth century. Her understanding was that melancholy is a sentiment of self-indulgence, which would remove an individual from the redemption of God.

I thought about it. To a certain extent, I agreed. When I am feeling melancholy, I do not seek to leave my state of melancholy. I suppose, in that way, melancholia is a disease quite unlike other diseases. What does that even mean, a disease? Diseases are classifications assigned by individuals who wish to understand individuals who do not fall within their “healthy-minded” conception of the world, and so they seek to place hierarchies that privilege their own existence while leaving the rest as an other. Is that all life is: trying to understand the world that is not accessible to us and calling all that which we do not understand to be something strange?

Melancholy is a sentiment of indulgence in the sense that an individual in a state of melancholy does not seek to exit a state of melancholy. An object in motion stays in motion. And, in this case, an object at rest doesn’t give a shit.

Lately, I’ve been feeling as if I am object at rest. More than the deterministic lens in which I view my life, it constantly feels as if I am the source of inertia in a world that is propelled by forces that have ignored me. I am the stillness that exists while objects around me constantly push and pull me towards propensities that are not mine. It is the world that propels me to act while there is my being that remains stagnant. The world is the agent, and I am the subject. I contradict Newton’s third law of motion. The action of the world may meet me, but I do not meet the world with an equal and opposite reaction. The world does not heed my screams; it simply passes through me like a river current moving around a rock. It is infinite, and I am not.

All I want to do is remain in my state of melancholy, but it is the world that compels me to exit. I wish to continue to remain in my self-indulgence, but it is the world that does not allow me to do so. I want to remain in a state of stillness, where I could be separated from the world. But the world does not allow stillness. The world is indifferent towards my wishes. The world blistering whiteness of a blank Word document, and I am the minute etchings of words that are carved into its infinite whiteness. When I finally reach the end of a page — when I finally feel as if I have reached some sort of coherence and structure in the world — I would press enter one more time, and then there would be another page with another flash of whiteness.

Unless, of course, I set the settings to no page breaks, and then I am constantly overwhelmed.

I am so far from all that is the world. I am so far from myself. All I want to do is escape the world, and the world does not let me escape from itself. Of course, it makes ontological sense, as I am an entity of the world, so it is inevitable that the continuance of the existence of the world would necessitate the continuance of my own existence. But, sometimes, most of the time, I wish it weren’t the case. I wish that I was not a part of this world. The world is constantly in motion. This summer, living in New York, I have especially felt the constant motions of the world. I may be able to count the leaves of a barren tree in winter, but the sight of thousands of falling leaves in fall overwhelms me. I am able to conceptualize little numbers, such as living in the Main Line, but cities as big as New York frightens me.

My fantasies were a bit different than most people’s growing up. I never really fantasized about wealth or power or glory. I actively, and successfully, suppressed those thoughts because they did not seem real to me. Whenever I would fantasize about a life that was unlike the one I had, my mind would immediately identify the schism, and the thought would be no more. I did, however, fantasize about leaving the world for a bit. There was this white chasm that had envisioned… think about the scene in the “White Christmas” episode of Black Mirror where Jon Hamm’s character was extorting the cookie in a computer generated an infinite white room — that was the white chasm in which I fantasized about. I just wanted to enter this space and never leave… at least, for a little bit.

The speed in which this world moves and propels me is overwhelming. I feel as if I am tied by a rope to a chariot. While I am able to keep up with the horses for a short while, namely when I was a child, the stamina of the horses eventually becomes too much for me. Because I am tied by a rope to the chariot, I am a part of the chariot. But, also, because I am a part of the chariot, I cannot escape from the chariot. I keep up with the chariot as much as possible while I still have the will to do so. But, sooner or later, I will collapse from exhaustion and fall down onto the ground. But, the chariot, being the powerful being that it is, continues to plough on without me. It is indifferent to the scrapes and burns that result from me being savagely dragged on the ground, leaving a trail of skin and blood behind me.

The world passes by me so quickly. As the stressed high-school student that I was, the world passed by me really quickly. All I wanted was to escape from the current of this world. But I cannot escape from the world that I occupy any more than a rock can not escape from a river current that it occupies. The world does not care if I think the world passes by me too quickly. To some extent, I have little care for my own feelings as well. I have little idea if my feelings of the world passing by me quickly are even real at all. It is what I feel at the moment, and then my fantasies form in order to address my inadequacy, but then that’s the extent of it.

Of course, my fantasy of exiting the world in a white chasm were never realized. It seems that the technology to leave this world does not exist yet, so I am still confined to continue existing in this world that does not care for my existence. The only way that I could stop the flow of the world is to die. Through dying, I would be severing my attachment to this world. If I am no longer a part of the world, then the forces of the world would no longer be able to affect me. Dying, to me, is the equivalent of cutting the rope to the chariot that propels me to run even when I no longer have the energy to continue running. I would finally be free from the heartless nudging of the world — from the world that would never care for me in the way that I have wanted to cared for the world.

But, unfortunately, there is a sort of permanence to dying. Once I die, I cannot un-die. If I could un-die, then that would certainly be ideal. Then I would be able to cut my rope to the chariot whenever I was tired and reattach it whenever I was not tired. But, sadly, the world was created in a way where the rope that ties you to the world cannot be cut and repaired. Death is the end, and the state of timelessness that entails can only be achieved at the end through death. Once we have been unconsensually thrown into this world, we cannot escape unless wish to exit for good. It is an exhausting night at a rave in which we enter that does not allow re-entry. Once we exit, we cannot come back.

And, like raves, life is saddening.