Phantom Aubergine beckons

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I never was a fan of The Blog Shift, but having to sign into my old gmail account to access this place is becoming tiresome. See you here? Or not. Or yes?

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There are days where I realize how cruel I’m being, and how fucked up this is. How fucked up I am. And I realize I will end up eating my own heart, chewing with blood smears all over my mouth. I’ll eat the shriveled parts of my heart that have turned black, the rotted bits, the putrid aorta, the sour ventricles. And then there will be nothing left. It feels I’ve let this heart, this soul, this whatever-inside-me that’s supposed to be me rot, and I am now nothing, I am a shell, I am not real.

I'll keep dancing when the song ends with the hope that it will replay, over and over

When I get scared, I will say that I have to go back to God. That it makes sense, life doesn't work when you don't have your shit together, and how can you have your shit together when you're not talking to God? I will have this thought in some recess of my mind, and I'll convince myself that I'll go back to God, I'll do my prayers, I'll trust, I'll have faith, I'll be okay. As far away as I stray, I think this fear, and the subsequent search for forgiveness and the desire to be good; is indelible.

But that feeling, though I think (or I hope) is genuine, is fleeting. And all too often I go back to the next good song I listen to, or the work I have to do, or the friend I'm meeting up with, and it is lost.

I was reading something, some article or forum online, and it suddenly occured to me, with glaring obviousness, that I am wasting too much time being insecure. Too much time, too much fucking time! I wish I didn't worry so much when I screw up, I waste so much time regretting the mistake, instead of just doing the necessary things to make up for it and just moving on. I waste too much time being embarrased over things I've said in conversations. I am insecure in my ability to do work, in my appearance to others.

What if I'm too busy worrying about work, about being fat, too worried about being disappointed, too caught up in comparing myself to others, too busy being far too selfish, too scared to think I am good enough for anyone,  that I end up missing out on life? I have this deep-rooted fear of being vapid, of being nothing except a shell, no substance, no depth.

I am too busy doubting myself. Insecurity is ugly.

I have come across some new good music, and listening to such songs, I have this familar overwhelming surge of something that makes me feel like bursting at the seams, it feels like anything's possible, anything is doable. I am 23, and life is good, and I can dance and I can think and I am confident in my skin,I can laugh and do whatever the hell I want, I am blessed.

But what happens when I have to go back staring at my financial model that is due tomorrow, or when I look at the material for training next week that I haven't gone through, when I'm stuck doing a presentation and I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing? When I wake up and find an email from my boss pointing out my mistakes? How do I retain or reconjure this feeling that I can do it, that it is not that bad at all, that it is nothing, that I'll be okay?

Goddamn. I have to stop over-thinking things and just do. Just be.

Arm-looper

Some girls are natural arm-loopers.

You know what I mean, right? The kind that like to loop their arm around yours when you’re out walking somewhere. For them it’s a natural thing, to encircle your arm with theirs and hold on. I think it’s an expression of trust, of familiarity. Sometimes, if you encounter a chronic arm-looper, you may find that they do it to you even when you’re not that well acquainted.  But in essence, people don’t loop arms with someone they don’t like.

For some reason, I am not one of nature’s arm-loopers. In general, I don't think I am quite accustomed to physical acts of affection. Hugging someone more often than not feels contrived, don’t get me started on air-kissing, and the only usual form of physical contact I initiate is restricted to placing a hand around or on someone’s shoulders.

Lately however, I am slightly alarmed to find that I want to loop arms with someone. Actively, positively want to. How bizarre. Can you freak someone out by coming up behind them and then suddenly attacking them with a determined latch onto their arm?

Regardless, I am a very willing arm-loopee, and still feel bursts of gratefulness and warmth when someone does it to me. So come one, come all. Let's loop.

These things are fathomlessly out of our hands

I’m sure some movie or book must have introduced me to the concept that we are the sum of our actions. That what we do signifies who we are, regardless of our thoughts, our intentions, or our words.

When I get caught up in the contradicting versions of the person I think I am in my head with the person I think I’m portraying externally, I echo this sentiment and think of myself in terms of the things that I do. I am my habits, my routine; I look for the familiar in what I do.

I am the attempt at harmonizing along to songs playing on the radio in the car when I’m driving alone.

I am the heavy eyelids I have when I’m reading in bed at night and don’t want to stop.

I am the same repertoire of songs I play on the piano, because my level of competence is stuck at grade four.

I am the pleasure of folding flour into cupcake or muffin batter, or the kneading of dough to make cinnamon rolls.

I am the volume I mute or the eyes I keep covered when watching something scary on tv on in the cinema.

I am the stunning exhibition of awkwardness when interacting with acquaintances; I am the bits and pieces of conversations that make me groan when they revisit my thoughts.

I am the sweaty mess I become when I exercise, I sweat like a mofo.

I am the things I write, I am the pages of my journal scribbled with my often ugly handwriting.

I am the embarrassment of starting to sing at the wrong moment of a song, or singing the wrong lyrics, embarrassment I feel even when I’m alone and no one’s there to witness my gaffe.

I am my slight obsession with Nigella Lawson.

I am the fuzzy warm feeling I get when the cat comes to my room and curls up next to me on my bed to sleep.

I am the disappointment that I feel at times.

***

Side-track. Side-track. Side-track.

Today I was out all day on this work thing, and my phone bloody died on me. I returned home to charge it, and when it restarted there were a slew of emails. If there’s anything these past 4 months of working have taught me, it is this golden nugget: The higher the number of emails, the higher the chance you may have screwed something up. This time around, I thought I screwed up again. So I did what anyone of my disposition is apt to do in these circumstances, which is to say “Fuck”, very quietly, and grabbed my laptop to rectify things. And as I was doing this, with that now familiar subtle tone of panic and distress underlining my actions, there was a moment where I was freaked out by the idea that this may be the rest of my life – work, the fear of having done work wrong, the heavy sighs of realizing that I have messed up again, that I am accountable to my bosses. Then it turns out it wasn’t so much a screw up after all, false alarm, and I was relieved, and I decided to blog instead.

Pretzel

When I say I like to dance, I am thinking of my tendency to shimmy around somewhat crazily on my own in my room, or occasionally in public. I know very little about structured forms of dance, so I grasp dancing as an extension of my enjoyment of music. I do it when I listen to a song that makes me want to move.

I went to the Future music festival a while back, and the thing I loved most about it was the fact that at a few points, it didn’t really matter who could see me, or that I looked like a hot mess, or that I was dancing alone at the back whilst people were up front near the stage. It did not matter, nothing mattered! I was dancing underneath a night sky lit up by stage lights, and the music was so loud, and I had as much space as I could please. I don’t think I thought about much, I did not worry about work, I did not dwell on where I was with God, I was mercifully distracted from thinking of people that have been on my mind, my insecurities and self-doubt did not matter. How blissful it is at times to think of nothing. I am, moreoften than not, grievously far too self-conscious to let myself go completely, so when I am able too, it’s brilliant.

I screwed up at work the other day, and as a result I am mortification personified. I try not to linger on the matter, but I still feel like I’ve been hit with a pie in the face every once in a while when it crops up again. I’ve come to think of my mistake as a sly little creature with pointy ears whose chief motive in life is to remind me of his presence and throw pies in my face, the sneaky little bastard. He did pretty well yesterday, I left work feeling like an incompetent idiot, and I was disappointed to find that going for a run did not work its magic this time; I was still emitting audible groans whenever I was unfortunate enough to remember the whole shebang after I finished. I have to ride this godforsaken incident out, and I suppose 6 months from now I’ll be humorously recounting this incident to whomever. But in the meantime, I shall resort to food, because I feel glum and want a pretzel.

I like people who smell good. Does that sound creepy? Maybe it does, but I’ve been riding the train to work this week, and I like how in the morning, people have just sprayed themselves with one perfume or another, and everyone smells so pleasant.

I have to admit, I like to people watch. I was taking the train last Saturday, and it was filled with young people heading for a day out. There were a couple of girls sitting opposite me, and they were dressed up, with their jeans and trendy tops and warpaint on. The girl on the right was wearing wedges, she was plump and her outfit was mostly over the verge of being too tight, but there was something slightly glorious about her. Her hair was long and luscious, and she wore casually flipped over one shoulder. Her plumpness seemed curvy and voluptuous, and she came across like the kind of girl who would be mischievous, with a sassy attitude and a sort of playfulness. You got the feeling she would know how to flirt.

On the other end of the train were another group of girls, a couple of them fashioning the Yuna-style of wearing the tudung(is it officially called tudung Yuna? I’m imprudently assuming Yuna pioneered that particular style) and clutching handbags, and they looked young, maybe form 3? They were giggly, and I noticed a man standing nearby smiling at them appreciatively.

I suppose I was watching these girls with a sort of fondness, because I did the exact same thing at their age, and have various memories of my mom dropping me off at LRT stations so I could meet up with friends at KLCC or Midvalley for a movie. Dressing up, going out at 10.30 in the morning, excited at the prospect of hanging out with friends or perhaps the idea of who else we might bump into? On the whole, I felt glad for them and I felt old, but at the same time I had an acute sense of relief.

There are times.

There are times.

There are times, when I feel like despair is wrapped tight around my heart, and I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe, and it will not get better, and I will choke.

I would be the first to contend my sadness is bullshit. Sometimes I think I would be happy to have my sorrows validated one day, to have some sadness-verifier take a look at me and say "This one's legit, folks! It's real. Her sadness is real. Her tears are not a waste of our time". But in the meantime, I wrestle with the belief that I am a stupid, selfish, self-centered idiot who finds trivial reasons to feel the blues over.

But. There's that choking feeling. Goddamn. Tell me it's real.

I have to admit, I still wait for my soulmate. I hate the vulnerability of that, how pathetic it makes me feel, how self-conscious I am because of it. I have to grow up and get that shit out of my system,man. I've embarrassed myself one too many times because of it, looked for it where it doesn't exist, get my fucking hopes up for nothing.

But sometimes, when it seems like I can't feel God, and I don't know what to do, I do think of this soulmate, and I wonder if I'm placing too much faith in the belief that things would be different if this soulmate were here.

I am so tired of being unrealistically sad. I am sick of these unlikeable parts of myself. I need to bloody relax.