Selflessishness

Everything I do, I do it for you ... for you to do for me as I do for you ... I think?
Maybe it's all for China. (Thank you Tim Minchin ...)

So far, it seems that the oft-pondered mystery of human contact - or lack thereof, technically - is figuratively (and perhaps even literally) debilitating.

It's a matter of trust, you see. I don't trust myself, so how can anybody else trust me, let alone love me?
Touch is all I know, all I feel, all I fear. Probably won't be long now before I get lovingly caressed by the considerable momentum of an errant vehicle. To die without a hug; is it worth it?

Am I worth it? Somebody save me from this fucking hellhole, because my conscience is irrevocably past the point of apathy.

Also, random girl crying on the side of the road. I wish I'd had the strength of character to talk to you. For what it's worth, I love you - or at least, I hope somebody does.

The Bad Thoughts

No more BFF person.

Can't talk to anyone.

Can't be honest, can't trust.

Can't stop comparing.

Can't stop seeing, can't stop hearing.

Can't stop feeling, can't stop thinking.

Nobody asked for this stunted world - I sure as hell didn't ...

A breath of fresh air? The brush of skin? The void in my soul, my eyes out of control.

Don't leave me alone with my thoughts.

Reflecting My Eyes, But Not Me

Can I trust you? Can you feel what I feel, see what I see, dream what I dream?

Can I trust you? In all that I see are the cracks of reality leaking through.

Can I trust you? Hope is a lie, bred of love and insanity. Hope ... for more.

Can I trust you? You who proudly proclaimed the mysteries of my soul even before you saw me?

Mirror, mirror, on the wall - reflecting my soul, the corner of a ball.

Can I trust you?
Can I trust you?
Can I trust you?
Can I trust you?

Or can I not?

Leading The Charge

Well, here I am. Starting to write this post several hours after informing no less than three friends that I was already working on it.
Guess there's something to be said for external accountability.

In a weird way, not counting my brother's implicit tyranny or my generally sheltered upbringing, discovering feminism is what fucked me up the most.
I mostly thought girls were just not-boys. It doesn't help that the (Catholic) school I went to for nine years kept us segregated. I didn't talk to the girls much because virtually none of them took the public bus home. It irks me to think just how different my life might have been if we'd just got me on the school bus instead.

Women were different, and while I knew that in theory I had no understanding of it. I never received any form of the sex talk from my parents ... or rather, it wasn't a talk so much as a book that my father gave me and told me not to read until my 13th birthday. Of course I read it pretty much immediately. And wouldn't you know it, I had already seen what genitals looked like in the encyclopedia. 'Adolescence' was in there too, and it held little interest for me even as I began to experience it.

I didn't understand that periods were a real thing, even as I read about it in the encyclopedia. I found the part about airplanes far more interesting. I didn't know how women experience the world differently, because the only one who might have been close to me and shown me - my sister - departed for college in America when I was 11. As time went on, I became afraid to talk to girls, and I never truly understood why. It's a telling thought that I lived next to a beautiful girl - who was in my year - for many years, and barely knew of her existence until we had nearly graduated.

All of this is ancillary. I can't pinpoint a specific event that led to me being so introverted. Nor can I quite explain how I reinvented myself once I went to college. It was there in the USA that I realized the importance of a hug, and this has shaped me ever since. Not counting my early youth, in the years that I needed it most I wasn't really familiar with human touch that was more than momentary or rough. Gently holding a girl's hand, for example, at Mass during the 'offering of peace', was something I'd hardly experienced before. This is among the few things that kept me attending church in the USA, God be damned. The chance to hold a person's hand, and share an experience with them. What actually fucked me up was finding out all the shit that goes on around that simple desire.

The literal and metaphorical meaning of 'harmony' is something that is lost on the average self-righteous Catholic here. I need harmony in my life. I need a catalyst to lower the bar that must cross to get the ball rolling.

I need to sleep.

Try ... again?

What am I up to now - three?

I don't want to play games. I don't want to be dishonest. I want to be loved and I need a hug.

It Is Unfortunate

It's unfortunate that the world is a false dichotomy.

It's unfortunate that if I appreciate some parts of my life I am not allowed to dislike other parts of it. All or nothing? Fuck you.

It's unfortunate that I have no desire to die, but I also have so much issue with the idea of continuing to live.

It's unfortunate that I didn't develop the social skills necessary to communicate myself to those I want to care about. Fuck your bridge game, dad, because you can't accept that maybe I would have been more appreciative of all you've given me if you actually worked less, played less of your stupid fucking billiards and bridge, and taught me to appreciate what I had instead of shouting. It's way too fucking late now.

It's unfortunate that all I see on social media is (with a few exceptions) the happiness in people's lives, and not the darker side of the coin.

It's unfortunate that if my brother had treated me, so many years ago, with the compassion that he recently showed that dog that bit him, things would have turned out a lot different - Or would they have? Considering that, being only 4.5 years older than me, he hadn't learned such compassion at the time ...

-----------------------------------------

The house I'm living in overlooks a pretty nice view. That picture being taken from the roof, of course.
The view's somewhat less majestic down at the road level, but it's still nothing to sneeze at.
By which I mean that the view at the road level is usually another person.

That's right, I live next to one of the chill-out/make-out spots in town. "Good for you!" might be your instinctive reply, for which I don't necessarily blame you.

Yesterday there were a bunch of kids hanging out there. Unlike me, most or all of them are perfectly comfortable with the shitstorm that is Indian traffic. They also seemed perfectly comfortable with each other, something that I don't ever recall being. Maybe it was because I didn't hang out with my classmates much. I couldn't even begin to tell which was the cause and which was the effect.

Making friends as an adult is harder than it has any right to be. In a half-alien culture, no less.

Don't read this

Everyone's Different

People will tell me, "Hey, you have't gone through shit in your life. Deal with it."

Does it occur to them that maybe - just maybe - the reason I don't know how to just 'deal with it' is because I never went through any shit in my life that would teach me to deal with it as effortlessly as they do?

Nobody should depend on anybody else, right? Isn't that how society works?
I thought society functioned and became 'civilized' because we could depend on others for the things we are incapable of ourselves.

Some All chemical reactions require a certain input of energy to take place. Most laymen never really consider this, because nature generally takes care of the pertinent variables. Non-chemists also never truly appreciate the ubiquity and importance of catalysts in said reactions. Life would not be possible, or at least not in any meaningful way, if there were nothing helping the reactions along that keep us autonomous meatbags mobile and conscious.

Since you probably drifted off to sleep during that small digression on chemistry, very few of you will truly appreciate the parallel drawn from the microscopic chemical world to the rather macroscopic world of daily life and psychology. All other things remaining equal, what would be the odds of a given reaction occurring if a catalyst was not present?

Where and what would you be right now, if nothing helped the process along?

Where and what am I? Where is my catalyst?

Let's Match

I'm so utterly lonely that I'm having trouble sleeping.

If I do find someone who can help me, I don't know that I'd sleep any better, on account of feeling something new.

Where do we go now?

So Much Could Have Been Done Different.

You are you.
We are you.
You are me.
There you are.


A thought, a flash, a spark, a wave of emotion.

Read no more, there we go. Time is blind, justice is crippled, love is drunk, fear is near.

A word of warning: she looks like you, and you look like them. Don't be fooled.

Let Me Put It This Way

If you're a friend of mine who reads this blog, let me know. (... the whole "if a tree falls in the forest" conundrum.) And in addition, if you're female, and you live nearby to where I am, please consider providing a shoulder for me to cry on. I have no one.

I Don't Know Me

Not counting the mainstream blogs that I read, I follow exactly two people right now. I don't know if they follow me. I don't know if they'd care. Well, I know one of them might. Kind of.

I don't know why I do music, do I? I was ... in it, and it was fun, I think.

I learned some things in a haphazard way. I can sing for the most part, and - interestingly? - my voice, quite possibly, is strong only because of my rocky relationship with my brother.
But I don't have the vocal control that I've seen people accomplish. I don't have a falsetto that I know of, possibly due to a bout of strep throat in my teens.

I've mentioned before how my mind seems to operate, and that hasn't changed. Yes, I was instructed in violin / viola; no I did not have formal instruction on mandolin or for my voice. But what worth are those instruments on their own? I'm not good enough that I could command others' respect - I'm only novel enough that I demand their envy. The instant I leave that bubble and go someplace with actually good musicians, the jig is up. I know this, because I was in that place where the good musicians are, for four years. And they all show up online, with so many others.

I'm not worth any of this. I need someone to tell me why I go on.

Speaking Of Me, Myself, and I

Story of my life: I didn't ask to be born. I didn't, I didn't ask. Who can I blame for this blunder, I wonder?

Nearest Distance

How can I keep away while also being so near?
Fences! Barriers, yes? Barriers solve everything, just ask the Chinese ... or Donald Trump.

I can't fence myself in, because that's all I've been doing my entire life.
I can't fence her in, because she's a person with a life that is worth far more than I could ever be.

How obnoxious is it for a person to ask how obnoxious they are?

Regress

I was on a boat for a bit, yesterday.

I remembered how someone once tried to fondle me on the public bus when I was young, in Dubai. I used to walk around, and take the bus, and taxis, alone, a lot, growing up. That it only happened once is ... lucky.

I recognize how lucky I was that I lived on one of the most crime-ridden streets near my college in the USA for 3 years ... and nothing happened to me even though I walked and cycled alone very regularly, even late at night.

And then I remembered that I was also not a woman.

I nearly broke down and wept on that boat.

What Are Ye Thinkin'

Will I survive?
I don't know. I don't think anyone has.

What does survival mean?
I don't know. I don't think anyone knows.

Where do we go from here?
Oh, fuck my brain.

Trust In Chance

I had a chance. Really I did. Didn't I? I don't know, I can't remember. I can't trust my memory any more.

I'm so glad I met Gretchen.
Why am I sad? Well, she's the fucking psychologist, maybe she can tell me, because I sure as fuck don't want to know.

I want these things to come together so bad.
I want to matter, to have a dream.
I want to sleep again.
I want to love, to trust.
I want to not hurt anymore.

I want justice for the world, but Santa's sleigh is kind of weighed down already with all those iPhone 9s and PS7s. No room for feminism in there, much less egalitarianism.

At least I got to touch boobs once. That was cool, I guess.

That Which Needs To Be Said

I am lonely.

Between The Extremes

I've never known either true happiness or true misery in my adult life.

With the exception of that morning some time in the summer of 2012, now that was truly something. I woke from a truly blissful dream and for that short pre-waking period I remember the feeling of utter contentment far beyond words.
And lo, how I crashed from that pedestal. I'd thought I knew how to feel sad; nothing I know of describes the feeling of such joy revealing itself as a fantasy.

In the space of minutes, I experienced what felt like the highest height and deepest depth of my emotional capability. But after such happiness, what else is left but sadness? That is the default state; no doubt dark is merely the absence of light, but there is no self-sustaining light in my life to speak of.

It comes up in all the movies: trust. One thing that underlies all of what we so arrogantly call 'civilization'. Religious blowhards like to call it 'faith' like calling it a different name gives them special power (which, unfortunately, it actually does, in some sense).
As of this point in my life, I have yet found no one to trust except Princess Sierra - and it hurts. I'm not in America where I could cry on a friend's shoulder. Fuck, for crying out loud, I don't even trust myself. How can I be a functional adult?
Trust in human relationships is not a barter system in practice. And therein lies its difficulty for me, having never had anyone to teach me the ropes.