abhidahlia

[abhidahlia]

sea moss .

on colder days

the ocean breeze

wafts in

the deep

refreshing

chill of a gloomy day

the smell before it rains

the crackle

of thunder

in the distance

you smell

a storm on the way

but it'll pass

someday

eventually

someday

on calmer waves

floating

lost seal

on a bed of ice

the stars

cloudy your eyes

brighter than that sun

tears streak across the galactic ocean

racing towards the unknown

more unknown than the sea

it spreads

moss fills every crook

every cranny

every crevice

dream of citrus when you weep

and the care of one less vast

more singular

perfectly personified

you remind yourself

its okay to float

ships are not meant to sink

and sometimes moss grows

where you least expect

buoys battered by rust remind you

history

the sea

the current

teeth

plankton

liberty

the shine of grey clouds

milk

vitamin d

the sun

a dream

life

me

finds a way

~~~

If I could attach an image to this poem it would be that of a seal floating on an iceberg, much like the ones that are minutes or seconds away from being eaten by orcas, or in the case of this hypothetical image, something much bigger than them. The ocean is a recurring theme for me. Not so often anymore, I would wake to the feeling of being rocked by waves despite not having been at sea for days, weeks, months, or years. It’s from being on my dad’s boats so much as a child, I believe. The ocean is, also, so large and vast and empty and full of unknowns we cannot yet comprehend. It is humanity’s greatest mystery behind our own selves, tied with the exploration of space and the discovery of new unknowns of the ways of the universe. The ocean happens to be closer, and so terrifying. I love it. The poem, however, is about how depression is so overwhelming, like the idea of the ocean, that it engulfs you, but like the waves and the cold days it will someday pass. And go brush your teeth. It may not make you feel better but at least you won’t have to taste that all day. Yuck. 

[abhidahlia]

March 29th, or 30th, or 31st

Word count: 3068. Also on substack.

Today, or yesterday, or tomorrow, is the 12 year anniversary of the beginning of my writing career. I remember exactly where I was, sitting on the floor in my mom’s living room, staring at the heater. Years before, I would download a joke app because I wanted to be funny and witty and clever and outsmart all the other kids in middle school. I deleted the app after realizing I’d heard funnier in class or on the quad for P.E. and lunch. But, years later, to catch us back up again, I redownloaded it. Not sure why. I was going through old apps that’s for sure, and redownloaded it, and that’s how the history books get made. I found stories on there. Weird. This is a joke app. There were forums too, the names of which I don’t remember, but I remember there were two forums where people posted stories. I posted in the wrong forum, and someone told me to go elsewhere. So that’s what I did. Anytime I opened the other sections of the app it was so dull and / or dry and / or dead. Our section was alive. There was a little community, thriving. There was a top category (as in, most rated of all time), a most popular of the week category, and a fresh / recent uploads category. The app is now defunct and not compatible with new phones, but I made many, many memories in my three years on there.

I was reading someone else’s story, not sure what about anymore, and in the comments someone made the classic joke of the era. “Still a better love story than Twilight.” I read Twilight when I was 10, specifically July 2010, and it is a badge of honor that one of my twitter accounts still reflects my ten-year-old love. But, three years later, fresh teenage me saw this comment and went. “Huh. Yeah. I bet I could write a better love story than Twilight.” And thus, on March 29th, or 30th, or 31st, 2013, my writing career was born. 

I must also add some clarification. Is a storyteller born when they write their first story, pen and paper? Are we not all storytellers? I believe that is a fundamental part of what makes us human: our ability to tell stories and create art. I’ve been writing stories since a kid, telling elaborate stories my mom and other adults would call lies. I knew they weren’t true, so sure I was lying by technicality, but I wanted someone to hear me and be amazed. I wanted attention damn it and I’m not ashamed to admit it anymore! When I was nine or ten I made a Facebook fanpage about me, invited everyone I knew to follow, and only made one post. Something along the lines of “When I grow up, I want to be a writer.” Completely forgot about it, got in trouble for having a Facebook that young, accounts deactivated, blah blah; years later I’m writing a story and my cousin tells me, “Oh yeah. I remember that page you made.” Unlocked a memory. Unlocked several memories of me writing stories on paper and pencil, putting them in my nicest folders, hiding them so my mom wouldn’t see. Have I not always been a writer? Or does my art only become art once another person has seen it? If that’s the case, other than school assignments, then the last three days of March 2013 is when our story begins.

I’m not so sure of the date. I think it was the 30th. I know I told myself to remember it was the last few days of March, and I have a memory of me remembering that I scrolled and saw the first note (I mostly write on a notes app) I wrote was the 30th, but what if I wrote something on the 29th and deleted it? So let's just go with the 30th for sure. That’s when I started crafting my ideas.

My first story was about a black girl (light skin unlike me, somewhat middle class like me) and the new guy at school falling in love. It was so angsty and so bad. I hadso much to juggle: a whole ensemble of characters, a best friend with an eidetic memory because I thought it was cool, at least four love triangles, including one love rectangle (or pyramid?), teen pregnancy, adopted sibling romance, and the first story (because of course there was a sequel) ending with our main character getting hit by a car and waking up with amnesia. The second story picked up seven years later with the main character having her memory back, married to the person in the triangle who she wasn’t destined for (very Bella ending up with Jacob) and her daughter trying to get her parents back together despite them being married to other people. I never ended up writing the third and final story. It would’ve involved kidnapping, another pregnancy, suicide, crime, mystery / thriller etc blah blah blah; the point is obviously I started watching Degrassi way too young (age nine at least) and all those days being sick watching Maury or Jerry Springer or Steve Wilkos with my grandma really molded my little baby brain. All evidence of these stories have been wiped from existence. I hope no one remembers them, except me, and even I don’t want to.

I’ve come to regret deleting those stories. I wish I still knew what my thirteen year old voice sounded like to compare to today, but at least once a year for five years I would try to reread what I wrote back then and I could feel my brain rejecting the information (better known as cringing) so I made the executive decision to delete anything that wasn’t good.

I deleted everything. I deleted a lot of my second story too. About a demon (no, not like that kind) trying to run away from her past. Kind of? The original idea was for her to be a matchmaker, but it changed a lot as I was writing it. It also got a sequel with angels, and an unwritten tri-quel with witches and trickster spirits. I’m making it sound much more impressive than it would’ve been. Once again this story had some classic Twilight elements, namely way too many chapters dedicated to the supernatural characters fighting a “war” over the main character and backstories for characters that were so much more interesting than the story happening in the present. The sequel (with the angels) was set in 2023 back when I thought that was a year so far away it would never come, or I wouldn’t live to see it because I was gonna die before my eighteenth birthday. Why didn’t past me warn future me about the pandemic!

I had many stories I wrote in that three year period. (2013 to 2016, to clarify.) So much to say. So much to show and tell. A cryokinetic falling in love with a pyrokinetic (very Zutara meets Sky High). A former hitwoman on the run after killing her mentor’s son / ex boyfriend / adopted brother (I did a lot of stuff with pseudo incest. I may write an essay on the topic as a genre in media in the future, it’s so fascinating). A handful of Disney princess reimaginings: Cinderella as a prostitute, Rapunzel as the lost princess of England but she’s a freedom fighter for the partition of India, Sleeping Beauty but she has Sleeping Beauty syndrome so the whole story is a dream, Snow White in witness protection from her evil auntie who has claim to the throne, something with the characters of Frozen I don’t really remember. A mermaid (not The Little one, we’re off the Disney stuff now) adopted by humans who doesn’t know she's a mermaid (very H2O meets the Thirteenth Year). Twins separated at birth who fall in love except they're not twins because they were switched at birth (No, I didn’t watch the show, but I clearly love a scandal). A girl who is killed by her kidnapper and must get over her grief of not being able to live her life while in The Afterlife (yeah, that’s the title. I’m sooocreative). I could go on, but I shouldn’t. I think I got all the important ones.

I cranked out so many stories. I could’ve flunked high school. I didn’t. I barely stayed afloat. That A in Spanish really held me on. I was a good student. People would turn to me for help with assignments and homework. Someone told me once “You're the smartest person in here but you don’t apply yourself.” Truth is I didn’t do homework. I refused. On top of the other shit I had going on in life, my only moments of joy were the litany of tv shows I had lined up everyday of the week, except Saturdays because I had two shows then, and the fact that after a shitty morning and a shitty day at school and a shitty evening alone with my mom, at night, I got to turn off everything except my phone and type type type away. I would stay up until 3 or 4 am, typing until I literally couldnt keep my eyes open anymore. I woke up many a times to ffffffffffffffffffcGGggvfddffk nn mmmmmk being the last thing I wrote. Then I would go to school, drink coffee, and catch up on all the sleep I missed.

I miss that time. Don’t get me wrong it was awful. I would never go back to it. I miss how much I wrote.

I don’t miss how much I wrote in secret. Another classmate said she liked something I wrote in class, so I showed her the first chapter of the demon story I posted on Wattpad and she laughed. (I put a word through google translate in Latin trying to be all high fantasy super serious. In hindsight she wasn’t trying to hurt my feelings, I knew that even back then but I don’t know what I was thinking as a high schooler showing another high schooler something and not expecting them to laugh a little bit. I remember her liking something I made but all these years later I don’t remember her compliment. I only remember her laughing at one admittedly silly thing. How silly is that!)

To this day I pretty much only write at night. I’m writing this at night. I started it at 2:40 something, minutes after getting the idea, after already taking my contacts out. It is currently 3:25 am. All day I brew with good wonderful amazing ideas! Sometimes I write them down. Sometimes I continue to ponder. Sometimes I forget and it comes back to me days weeks months later and I still don’t write it down. But I do have a lot of notes. So so many notes. No execution. What a shame.

I’m thinking to myself, what am I afraid of? Someone laughing at what I have to say like that straight girl I had a mild crush on did? I still have a screenshot from a friend on the joke app telling me I was “not a failure and you shouldn’t hate yourself [...] You do realize youre like, the best writer on the entire app, right? I seriously dont think anyone else could write a story with as many characters, as many plots for each character but still have them all tie in [...] and make it all make sense and fit together at the end with a huge mystery and an amazing journey on the way[.]” And another rave review, “you are the only writer I read on here, you have a lot of potential and I can’t wait to see if you make a book for everyone to read and enjoy [...] I know you will achieve anything you set your mind to. you might only have a few people reading your stories, but these people that read are extraordinary, they see what I see, maybe even more than what I see. I see your greatness :D” Thank you to [Anna] and WolfReaper, respectively. This is my first time looking at those notes in years, but I saved them, deep in folders in my Google Drives. What a shame we don’t remember the compliments. Who cares if I flop? Who cares if I failed? Who cares if everyone laughs at me? At least I tried.

I’m so sick of not trying.

From 2016 ish to 2019, I wrote almost nothing. There wasn’t an exact reason for my slump, I just fell out of it? I was changing. I kinda sorta dropped out of high school. I finished my AA degree. In 2019 I did write 80 pages of backstory for a character, but I wasn’t in the same flow as my teenage self. I didn’t count it as writing. 2022 I said I was gonna officially try NaNoWriMo, reworking my first story into something good. It ended up being worse. (Well, maybe not as bad as the original, but definitely a close second). The story warped and changed at least three times while I was writing it. Characters do full 180s then 360s then 420s then 690s then fly off the X/Y axis into a different realm of spacetime, and so on. Also, I didn’t finish it until December 2023! But I like where it ended up, so let's pray draft 2 will be at least a little uniform. Still, I didn’t think of myself as being in the same flow.

2023 I started my masters (I feel like I’m giving a lot of my identity away with this). Working full time, I really didn’t have time to write, much less do anything else. No time for relationships, romantic or familial or friends. No time for self care. No time for anything. By the end of the year I would go home and stare at the empty blank white wall to decompress, and by the time I felt good and done I had to go back to work. I ended the year very low and started the next year even lower. But that one month gap between classes (Did I mention I did Spring, Summer, and Fall semesters with at most a ten day break between them?) revived something in me I really missed. In 2019, around the same time Abhidahlia was borne, I first got the idea a story somewhat inspired by Thor Ragnarok of all things. A black girl finds out she’s god, descended from god. (Little g is used purposely.) Eons ago the other gods went to war with each other and the main supreme HBIC god was fed up and left Heaven now the other ones don’t know what to do, so they turn to her. The idea isn’t the same as that anymore but it’s got some elements. I thought about that story here and there. I imagined it as a movie, then thought of it as a book. I drummed up characters names and details galore. I started writing a little here and there. I loved it. I didn't have much of a flow going, but I felt awake, like there was sun on my cheeks, like I was breathing fresh mountain top air. During my break, I wrote. I am a creative. I must write. I must tell my stories. My stories are my characters' stories. Abhidahlia is, in a way, a character. I am Abhidahlia. My characters are, in many many differing and conflicting complex ways, me. I must tell my stories. 

My next break between classes, I think I wrote some real gold. I wrote twelve pages that I think are the perfect first chapter. I’ve been writing more here and there, just to get the idea to finally be something more than a concept, something tangible, finally. I love it. 

What am I so afraid of? People not liking me? People already don’t like me. People thinking I’m stupid? My mother already calls me that! People thinking in general? People have always thought wrong.

I’m proud of what I write, what I make. I know it’s not the best. I love the idea that I will be the one to make it better. 

I have always been writing. I may not be sleep depriving myself like when I was a baby teen, but I am always constantly writing. Stories flow out of me. Creative convoluted solutions to simple problems given to friends as advice, mostly to make them laugh. Rewriting scenes of tv shows in my head of how I would’ve made it better. Getting inspired by a book and thinking of an idea for one of mine. A joke told as small talk to a stranger. Always always always I am writing. I love stories. Though this was nothing near my best, I hope you enjoyed this one.

I cannot promise I will upload often, but I am so sick of having all these ideas and nowhere to put them. I call my many Google Drives the archive(s). I want to finally show somebody, anybody, someone across the world who otherwise never would have interacted with me that I had something to say. Worry not of my identity. I do not wish to share that. Years ago on tumblr I saw something along the lines of “We were not meant to know what people’s faces looked like. We were meant to read the text and understand people’s ideas and minds and let that be what we know about the person.” If you must know, I’ll say it loud, I’m Black and I’m proud. I may share more in the future, but for now I want my words to speak for themselves.

It is 3:54 as I finish this, but I am sure I will make plenty of edits before I create the account and begin to upload. Welcome to The Absurdist’s Archive. If I remember (and remember to not let the voice in my head stop me from posting) I’ll be sharing my nonfiction writings and poetry. What the heck, maybe some short fiction too. I leave you with an amalgamation of the many mottos I live by. Never forget to live laugh love in the face of absurdity. We’re all gonna die anyway.