a fake handshake

words last forever but these ones are so empty.

do they come in an alienated form that only a few can understand?

sometimes it feels like this is an accident that was made to happen.

i'm sick of feeling this way, like i'm not sure of myself anymore, good enough anymore. if it's the way you really feel, i'd prefer if you'd just rip it off and make it clear. i'm tired of wondering whether it's all in my head or whether i'm reading the context clues the right way.

hold steady. 

act natural.

it blurs. 

sometimes things fall together; most of the time, things fall apart. 

and many countless days later

i spoke to V on Sunday night for the first time in three? years. honestly, i wasn't really sure if we'd ever come back to each other especially since we haven't met often. but she's been there for me through... a lot of things. a lot of years.

i've been thinking a lot since then. the guilt and resentment weighs, thick and heavy and cloying. everyone was so worried. they tried to help but they couldn't understand.

there was a time where i didn't have the words to talk about myself. where i didn't understand myself. where i was more anxiety than myself. more scared of myself than anything else.

a time where the only thing i knew to do was to either lash out or hide it.

sometimes it's easy to touch and just imagine. what if, once more, would it help?

the scars may have faded but i know they were there.

there was (is?) a time where that was the only thing that helped.

it's one long night that i'm passing through

it's okay to be angry and never let go//it only gets harder the more that you know 

i've never been so thankful to be on a break before. even the kids were starting to look at me funny. at least now i don't have to pretend that every thing is peachy, sunnyperfectdon'tletthemknowsmileyou'refine. keep it in even when you feel like your face is burning off. i had enough practise at that, once. 

it's been a long time since i blogged this frequently. i guess i never felt like i needed to hide so much these past years. i know that i'm slipping back to a bad place but the last thing i want to do is lay it out for everyone else again. they shouldn't be dragged down just because i can't get it together.

i start to part two halves of my heart in the dark

It's hard to feel like you're the only one being left behind. It's even harder to feel like nobody else even realises that they're leaving you behind.

I knew even before this year began that things would be hard. That I would be busy, that other people would be busy, that we would have to struggle to maintain at least some level of contact. It'll be okay, we said to each other. We'll work it out. We can't not. Because I can't imagine a life where we're not this close to one another. But sometimes now, it's like I'm the only one trying. It's as though, some time when I wasn't looking,  when I was too caught up in trying to make it through the every day, you moved on. Found something else, someone else. And they've filled up all the spaces that used to be me, filled up all the space and distance and everything between us and now. Now, do you even remember what we used to be? What I still want us to be. Do you even still want the same thing? Do you even still feel the same way? Would you even recognise me now?

I don't know.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not enough. Like I should have done more, made more opportunities for myself. It hurts to look at everyone else and know that they're going somewhere, doing something.

K and A and B and C have new work opportunities. O and M and V will be traveling before they settle down in their own dream jobs. M and S and K are all traveling because they can. C and T and S and A and L are enjoying all the perks of being on exchange. C and F are getting married. W and E are engaged. I don't remember when I last spoke to E, or N, or S, or G, all of whom used to--still are so close to my heart, even though I am (likely) not in theirs.

What am I doing?

trace that silver line

Happy Valentine's Day, self; here, have a whole ton of emotional pain :-)

Today I went on Facebook to go see what my former best friends are doing now that all three of them have ditched me and we are all running in completely different friendship circles. They seem to be entirely happy, which didn't really surprise me. I don't really want to wish them anything bad because I loved them a lot back then but... Well, I'm not all that mature in the end so I keep myself happy by thinking about all the aspects of them that are awful or could use improvement, and the fact that at least two of them will turn out to be complete messes in the future judging by the directions that their lives seem to be going in. But I guess I should probably be happy that they all got what they wanted in the end, even if they did have to dump me to get to that happiness. It wouldn't hurt to say "Hi, how are you?", would it? Though I'm not sure if there is anything left that we could possibly mend. 

Anyway, somehow or other I ended up back at one of my old semi-private blogs from high school this morning and read a few months worth of posts. It was my habit, back then, to constantly be linking to things without explanation of why it was relevant. So most of them are now rendered unlinkable, as is the way of the internet, and the ones that remain are a complete mystery to me. (One of the things that I fear now is that, in years to come, when I look back here I won't remember who all the people I talked about were.) A lot of things came crashing back though. Reach events and girls' breakfast; Sunday KFC runs; Playtime at Highpoint; Twins; First Aid camp; co-meets with 17th; S breaking her arms; the first time R and I really talked; Queens Park outings; after school fish&chips or HJ's; tobacco store ice cream; Myer couches always and purikura for all time.

I'm not sure I'm proud of, that I like, the person that I was then. I didn't know what I was talking about though - I was so young. I wonder if in the future I will look back here and feel the same way. I hope not. I hope that I've grown up; but perhaps I haven't, or at least, not as much as I'd like. But you know, life goes on and we grow and learn, about ourselves and what we want, and who we are. 

I don't want to be sappy here today. But I didn't intend on this post turning out this way either. I'm not really unhappy, despite everything I've talked about, more nostalgic, I suppose. 

星愿：I hope you can help me grow into someone I like, not just now, but in two or three years, too.

trying emotions

For the stalkers who stalk (who is even reading this out there?): FUCK Y'ALL. EAT SHIT AND DIE.

I'm pretty sure that accurately sums up about 80% of my feelings over the last week. The things people have been saying to me, I already know, and they're the last things I want to be hearing. It's aggravating in the worst way, because I've (almost) never judged them in that way. Don't do it to me.

I feel like shit, physically. Please don't let me actually get sick.

A snippet of something that I've been working on recently:
Fear makes your tongue swell, damming up all your cries. She strokes your hair back off your forehead, dirt and sweat and blood matting it to your skin. You blink away the film across your eyes, stare up into eyes rimmed with red, a mix of saltwater tears and desperation. Her voice is faraway and distant, like a foghorn out at misty sea. You can't concentrate but her mouth is moving and you struggle to push the words and letters back into their places; English and French and German and Thai that you learnt the taste of before you knew the sounds. Her hands are shaking. There are thirteen bits of green in her eyes and each part is tinged with a little bit of insanity. 

NaNo's just over a month away. I need to start putting some thought into what I want to write 50,000 words of.

Real updates later, I guess.