Sometimes the past is better dead

I went and read some old things. Blog posts. Term papers. Emails. And then older emails. I wasn't just dumb. I was really, really dumb. I'd laugh but I'm mortified. The only consolation is that it got a little better over the years.

I'm guilt tripping myself again. That's a statement, not a confession, you idiot. I'd like to keep the facts in front of me and try and make sense of them together (pssst: they won't). It's like a little ball of wool that's tangled far too much to ever be fully untied. But the little knots aren't that obvious on my new sweater, are they? We could hide one of them on the side, and, really, who looks at the back of sweaters anyway? A few hundred knots could be hidden here and there. But enough with the metaphors. It doesn't all make sense together because it can't. Not with all the switching, the back and forth from the words to the numbers to the outrageous. It's not consistent. I know this. It's no victory when all you can establish are symptoms, but then, you already know that there is *drumroll please* no cure.

I'm going to sit down and make a list of victories. I can hardly believe they ever happened, but listing failures ended in failure too. How ironic. Yawn.

(You don't get it. What I remember are the old, old things. They don't matter. Or do I remember them because of "it" too? I can smile at them indulgently. And, you know, forget about you sometimes. So we're ok. This isn't worth switching posts or blogs, is it?)

What I'm really afraid of isn't that there is no way back. That much is clear. I'm just worried about what it's going to be like. Fuck fuck fuck. I'm much more screwed than I thought. Maybe I'll just stick to the list of failures.

If these are the rules, this is not a life I want to live. Screw this.

Just waiting 'til the shine wears off

What's the price you're willing to pay for happiness? Does it matter when? I'm at the last stage according to the Wikipedia entry. Except the Wikipedia entry calls it severe. It's just splitting hairs, anyway. But what does it mean? What does really believing it have to do with anything, except that this is the stubborn stolidity of the other kind, the kind that refuses to budge, the kind that's really hard to overcome.

How would you react if I told you you've wasted the last 10 years of your life? Well, not wasted, but they were a waste either way. All lies. The first fear? Lies. The follow-ups? Lies. The whispers? Lies too. The hours and hours you wasted keeping the fear in check? Yes, those too. And the years I skipped in the middle of those? The ones I can't remember because, well, there aren't any markers I've left and it's too late now. They're wasted, too. Somewhere, some part of me is thinking that there are pins in my head pushing down on some part of my brain causing this, but that would just be the effect, not the cause. Something triggered it. And I know I'd like to take it all back. Never have believed it in the first place. But I don't know the trigger, and so I must be at fault.

How do you make peace with the fact that everything good that you ever thought would happen to you has already happened? Am I willing to pay for those good times, times I didn't realize were that good, by living out the rest of my life dutifully? Were they even that good in the first place? It's deadening, thinking that. People say the birth of your first child takes your breath away. But I can't look that far in the future. I need a small sign, something to tell me there are small things coming up that can make me smile.

I did get lost. This is more than just the disease.

What is your

Some things you just instinctively know. Favourite band? Radiohead. Favourite author? Coetzee. And sometimes you lose sight of things, and forget the why but not the what.

It's fun to remember the why. And now it's time to shake up the place. Is there even a point to all this?

There Is No Spoon

Victims, aren't we all?

Bashing yourself is so last week. And so fourth grade. I keep trying to learn to be part of the solution and I keep forgetting. (So much easier, not to). Writing a tell-all diary would be exhausting. I guess that's why they get ghost-writers.

The Sequel

I have set out to ruin everything. At least, I've set out to set out to ruin everything. Most of it has fallen apart anyhow. One way or the other, it'll all be gone. The only question is, what is it going to be like afterwards?

On Home

A few months ago, I was sitting on one of the small stools in the kitchen, the ones that make you feel like a little child again, waiting for the water to boil. I was making tea for my dad and thought how cool a feeling that was, to be home again, doing home-things in a warm kitchen where everything was as familiar as it was leisurely. But later, in a different city, in a place just called home, a place that I have to remember by numbers - fourth right turn, third house on the left - a place I have to recognize by signboards and which I sometimes pass over in the dark because I miss the gate, a place where almost-strangers let you in when you ring the bell; I waited the same wait, standing and waiting for the water in a newer pateeli. It wasn't warm at all; it was just a cheerless, empty, disconsolate feeling. It made me feel low to even think of another place as home. Eating in alien plates, drinking in alien glasses. I never learnt to memorize the house number or the telephone number because it just didn't feel like home.

I drank Cherry Coke today and it tasted the same as regular coke, but the aftertaste was cherry-like. That might have been the most symbolic thing that's happened to me in weeks.