lifeof-quietdesperation

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Turning 30 is nothing short of depressing.

It's terrifying. I feel like I should have achieved more by now, but I feel like I'm still very much a kid.

Absolutely blessed to be surrounded by friends and family, and a wonderfully thoughtful boyfriend.

But still, I can't help feeling sad and morose that my life doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

I am 30 and back in school, still living at home, and earning absolutely zero income.

I don't know where I thought I'd be when I'm 30, but here, this and now definitely isn't what I had envisioned.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Some days I don't feel very resilient.

When it's 3am in the morning and this side of the world is asleep, the voices in my head get louder. Like an endless chatter, like static noise on the radio, it never ceases and comes wave after wave, threatening to pull me under.

Some days, I tread water and surface for air with the occasional powerful kick. Other days, it seems so tempting to just like the depression pull me down.

I don't know much more I have left in me to kick.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

I can't stop thinking about this particular scene where Bojack speeds up on a long empty road, leans his head back with his eyes closed, and slowly releases his hands from the steering wheel.

I can't get that scene out of my head.

Sometimes, when I drive back alone in the dead of the night, when the roads are empty and cars are few, when the street lights blur into a dancing dragon and the red tail lights of the cars ahead blend into a symphony of lights, I feel the urge to press down a little harder on the accelerator. And sometimes I cave.

In the moments when I speed up along the highway, when other cars fall back behind me, for a split second, a long split second, I wonder what it feels like to die in a fiery crash. I imagine my death and wonder if I would feel regret or relief.

Most of the time, I imagine it as a reprieve.

Tonight, as I was driving back, I imagined the same, and for no rhyme or reason, I felt overwhelmed with sadness. The kind of sadness that consumes you whole, and leaves no space for any other kinds of emotion. The kind that squeezes your heart and stops it short, until you're gasping and desperate for air.

I blinked through the tears that blurred my vision, and realised that the way I'm feeling, it isn't new. It went away for a while, and I thought I was well again. But it has always been festering beneath the surface, waiting, plotting, biding its time.

Maybe it's tied to my career. A year and a half into my job in Japan, I started feeling this sense of ennui, like nothing matters and nothing ever would. I thought it was my environment so I packed up my apartment, shipped my life back, and came back home.

I started a new job and all was well again. I met someone amazing and I felt happy again, a feeling I hadn't had in a while.

It has been about a year and a half since, and that general feeling of ennui has returned in full force. Maybe it's the many changes happening at work, but maybe I'm just not wired right.

As I looked at the road ahead, my vision a blur, it hit me with sudden clarity that maybe I really do need help.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Melancholy

Some days I'm just hit with this random bout of melancholy. I could be laughing boisterously one moment, and struggling to hold back tears the next.

Today might be one of those days.

I feel like I'm stuck at the crossroads, my future pitch black, and I can't see beyond the immediate. I cannot possibly imagine being able to move past this shitty situation, I cannot possible imagine things getting better.

I constantly feel like my life is on pause until I can finally get out, but it seems like I'm moving further away from that with every step I get. I constantly feel like I'm postponing happiness, working for a goal that I can never accomplish.

Like I'm struggling to keep my head afloat but the current is getting stronger and pushing me further away from shore.

I honestly don't know what I'm doing anymore.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

I feel unsettled but I can't seem to put my finger on it.

Like I'm just a little off-centre, like my steering wheel is just a fraction of a degree off but I wouldn't be able to tell until I've driven far away enough, when I drive off the road and it's too late.

Like the slight lurch of my stomach, the slight twinge in my heart means something, but I can't tell what.

Like a storm's coming, but I've been too blind to the signs, stubbornly refusing to switch on the news or look out the fucking window.

I feel like something is going to go horribly wrong soon and I'm like an ostrich with its head in the sand, deep in denial and I wouldn't even realise it if death saunters up to me, whistling and waving cheerfully before taking me by the hand.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Resentment, I think, is the word I've been looking for.

A combination of bitterness and unhappiness, at not being treated right, treated the way you think you should be.

At being slighted, undervalued, underappreciated, taken for granted.

Like you don't matter the way you think you should.

Like they don't see you the way you see yourself.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

I wonder if we would ever run out of words.

Some days, I sit at my desk, and type words after words, paragraphs flowing effortlessly, prose turning into stories, stories into lives.

Other days, everything hurts, and my noise in my head gets too loud for me to hear myself. Anxiety, I think is that it is, and none of my thoughts make sense. Everything going around in circles, words jumbled up, and the space between letter blur before my very eyes.

Days when I'm ashamed everything I say or do, said or did, will say or will do. Days filled with self-loathing and agony, and I doubt every thought, every action, every relationship. I feel undeserving, I feel unappreciated, I feel conflicted.

Some days i don't feel anything at all.

And some days, like today, I wonder if my words will ever desert me. If one day, it would dry up, like a puddle in a hot dessert. I wonder if one day, I would be able to form a single coherent word, a single coherent thought. I wonder who I would be then.

I wonder if I'd ever run out of words at the rate I'm using them, for the nonsensical, the mundane, the meaningless, the weather talks.

I wonder if we would ever run out of words.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Bottling happiness

For no rhyme or reason, I started reading through old posts on my defunct Tumblr page, and came across this post I wrote on my 25th birthday, entitled bottling happiness.

As I read the post, I could remember everything about that night so clearly, I could see it all unfold in my mind so vividly, and realised this is exactly why I pen entries like these. To bottle emotions, to revisit past memories in the future, and every memory left unwritten vanishes eventually in the recesses of my mind.

And I just wanted to remember this exact moment, lying on the couch in my apartment in Shibuya. Hating my job, but grateful for the experience. Missing my friends and family, but thankful there's someone for me to miss. Thinking of him and wondering if he's thinking of me too.

The last birthday I spent with friends and family was when I was 25, 3 long years ago, and I have once vowed to never let that happen again. Cause life is too short for that, and every moment I spend in anticipation of home is a moment I've lost being away from home. Yet another moment I spend postponing happiness, and this is time I will never get back.

It is so easy to get into the habit of postponing happiness. We all do it, working weekdays in anticipation of weekends. I do it more so than others, living years away from home, and it's killing me inside, day by day, and no guarantee I'm postponing happiness rather than forgoing happiness. Cause that's what it feels like right now, like every moment of lost happiness is a moment I'll never get back, and I don't believe any job is worth forgoing happiness for.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Retrospect

So I've been reading old posts about my life in Japan, and now that I'm back in Japan for work, all these old, buried feelings of loneliness, pain, and suffering came rushing to the surface.

In some ways, things are different now, but in so many other ways, they really haven't changed much, and it's incredibly frustrating because it feels like I haven't changed, haven't moved on, haven't progressed.

Maybe I'm just feeling wistful cause I'm spending my birthday alone again, so far from home, but there's this little twinge in my heart, a bittersweet aftertaste in my mouth, a shortness of breath.

But times like these make me thankful for the friends and family around me, people who are there for me, people who care, people who would never leave. Times like these, I think of them, and feel blessed and content, in a way I haven't been in a long time.

I guess turning older isn't as depressing and lonely when you know you're not alone, despite being miles and miles away from home.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Thank god for Russian dash cams to bring us wonders like this

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Note to self: do not impulse message people when you're unable to fall asleep.

It will serve no purpose at all but to mortify you and no it would not help you sleep better at night. You'll be up longer, for more nights, regretting that moment you pressed sent, wondering what the hell possessed you to do that.

Fuck.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Regret and remorse

"Regret is hope without conviction. We're torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost of having done them"

(Andre Aciman, Enigma Variations)

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Comparing pain

So today I commented to a friend that I'm so tired already, just a week into my job search. I'm not sure why I told her that, I wasn't complaining, I know my situation is better than most and I have the luxury of taking my time to explore different avenues. I guess I said it sort of off-handedly, like a second thought, to fill the lull in our conversation.

I was shocked, however, when she responded with, " how can you be tired? "

At first I wasn't sure what she meant. Did she mean I was merely one week in my job search, I didn't slog long and hard enough to be tired? Did she mean the fact that I'm currently unemployed, not working everyday, and therefore had no right to be tired?

I soon realised she probably meant both, when she followed up with, " I was job hunting for months, and this was while I was still at my previous job. I was doing both, so you have no right to say you're tired "

I tried to play it off as a joke, but it has been hours since and I couldn't get that comment out of my head.

Is pain comparable? Is hardship something you can measure?

Is the loss of a pet any less significant than the loss of a blood relative? Does your sadness mean more than mine?

Do your struggles negate mine?

The fact that you went through a struggle that was more painful than mine didn't give you the right to belittle mine, or to tell me how I should feel.

Everyone processes situations and emotions differently. For every struggle you face, there's bound to be someone else with a struggle more heart-wrenching than yours. It's the "starving children in Africa" rhetoric all over again.

Stop telling people how they should feel. Stop comparing hardships and sadness. Stop invalidating others' struggles and emotions.

I'm handling things differently from how you handled things, and it doesn't make me any less human than you. I'm feeling things differently from how you felt things, and it doesn't make me weaker than you.

Comparing pain and sadness however, only serves to detract from our friendship, and make me lose a little more hope in humanity.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Procrastination

Thy name is...(launches Netflix app) BADUM

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Unmoving

Kate stood, frozen, unmoving. Her eyes darted around anxiously, palms sweating, heart beating fast. How could she make a decision? How could anyone expect her to make this decision, any decision?

A thousand possibilities, a million universes flashed before her eyes. Each decision leads to indefinite more, and the compound of every action, every blink of the eye, every step, every breath, culminates in endless outcomes, and the very thought of it is dizzying.

Her brain hurts just from thinking about it.

Every choice she makes closes her off to a thousand more, some temporarily, most for good. Can you miss what you never had? Kate closed her eyes and imagined different futures, different destinies, different fates and nodded, yes, she suspects, you can.

Kate saw herself as a writer, a mother, a politician, a drunk, a wife, a doctor, a librarian, a homeless, all leading vastly different lives in vastly different universes. Their worlds are so different, they're not even the same person. They probably aren't.  Kate feels like none of them.

She just feels lost.

Every second spent in passivity, inaction, indecision takes options away from her. Choices she could have made but can no longer do so. Futures she saw but ripped away viciously, spitefully, unforgivingly. The doors closed before her eyes, tauntingly, mockingly, provokingly. Look at all the things you can no longer have, they seemed to say, with a smirk, a sneer, a jab.

She should do something, Kate thought, almost absentmindedly, an afterthought, and she should do it now. Or soon. As soon as possible.

She remembers a quote by John Barth, her favourite existential novelist, "there's a great difficulty in making choices if you have any imagination at all. Faced with such a multitude of desirable choices, no one choice seems satisfactory for very long by comparison with the aggregate desirability of all the rest, though compared to any 'one' of the others it would not be found inferior."

She knows she's being foolish, greedy, stupid by weighing each option against all other options, but how could she not? Choosing one meant giving up on all others, and how could she possibly close the door on all those delicious possibilities? If she just sat still and did nothing at all, it meant she could possibly delude herself into believing that all the options are still, hypothetically, viable and very much attainable. If she did nothing at all, she could do anything she wanted. Be anyone she wanted to be.

She took a step forward, and an overwhelming sense of fear cripples her, an invisible force on her chest, pushing her back, holding her stationary, rendering her breathless. Fear of the future, fear of pain, fear of mistakes, fear of the uncertainty.

Outside the morning sun slowly rises in the cloudless sky, pale orange tinged with red. Spring, she realises with a start, it's spring already.  As she tries to quiet the voice in her head, she hears the rustling of the leaves dancing in the wind, the sound of traffic, gently and soothing, wafting through her open windows. If she strained her ears enough, she could probably make out the sound of her upstairs neighbour waking up and getting ready to start their day. In the seconds it took for that realisation, another door slams shut.

And another, and another, and another. The thudding speeds up, and slows down, getting louder and getting softer. It repeats, over and over again, and Kate's head starts pounding again.

Tomorrow, she decided. Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, or the day after that.

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

Refresh and regroup

Tucked away in the countryside, living with a group of people I have only met 3 days ago but I can honestly say are like family, I came to a sudden realisation. 

I haven’t felt so contented and so happy in such a while I have forgotten what that felt like. 

My days are spent in the farm, with leisure breaks in between, and meals with the happiest family I’ve ever met. My nights are quiet and solitary, but incredibly satisfactory, reading on the cool tatami floor, with soft music playing in the background. The nightsky is gorgeous, bright with stars, and quieter than I have ever experienced. My thoughts are louder in the silence, but for once, I feel peaceful, quiet, content.

Happy, even. 

[lifeof-quietdesperation]

First sentence prompt: Is there a reason you never say my first name?

Is there a reason you never say my first name?

When we first met in university, years, eons, a lifetime ago, I shook your hand and introduced myself. We were at a party, an orientation of sort, and everyone was at least 3 beers in. I looked you in the eye, and gave my best impression of a functioning, sophisticated adult, complete with a firm, albeit slightly sweaty, handshake.

“Alex Moffat. Nice to meet you.”

Cool as a clam, you nodded, shook my hand, and said nothing about my clammy hands. That, I think, was what made me fall in love with you.  

But even then, you never called me by my first name. It was always “hey”, or “Moff”, sometimes “babe”, but never Alex.

Not even when we ended up in the same lecture theatre the following semester, always sitting rows apart, with me somewhere in the middle by the aisle while you only ever took the back-row seat closest to the exit. Not even when we became friends and met up regularly at the school cafeteria, arguing over coffee the different nihilistic viewpoints in Bojack Horseman versus Rick and Morty.

Not even when we started hanging out outside of school, in your room, in my room, in the mall, at the movies, in restaurants.

Not even when you first kissed me, in the alcove on the third floor of the library, amidst dusty aisles and even older books. Nothing more than a quick peck between furtive glances, my heart beating so rapidly and loudly in the quiet stillness of the library. You turned and walked away before I could say anything, and even then, after the two hundred and twenty-four times I’ve called you by your name, you’ve never once called me by mine.

Not even when we first had sex, in my apartment while my roommates were out. In the dark, on my bed with freshly laundered 180-thread count sheets. Right before you came, you bit my shoulder and I think I heard you breathe “Moff” as you licked your bitemarks, soft kisses as if in apology for biting me. I was too busy coming my brains out to pay attention.

Not even when we bumped into my parents after dinner one day outside our regular restaurant near campus, and they stood in front of us expectantly, eyebrows raised, until I had no choice but to introduce you as a friend from school. Dad shook your hand, and asked, genteel and polite, if I have been good in school. I thought you’d be spooked, seeing how Dad has had a reputation in school for being a strict, no-nonsense professor, but you took it all in stride, looked him in the eye unblinkingly and returned his strong and sturdy handshake. “Moff’s the best,” you said, never once breaking eye contact.

Not even when I finally introduced you to my best mates, in a pub after tutorial one evening, and we spent the entire night complaining about school and drinking ourselves silly. You had been standoffish, bordering on rude, and I got a little annoyed but you made it up to me that night with gentle kisses and soft murmurings, saying how you weren’t good with new people but you’ll try harder next time, for me.  

I never once dared to ask you why. You were the cool, mature one in the relationship and I didn’t want you to think less of me and my petty concerns.

Perhaps, it was a cute couple’s nickname thing. No one called me “Moff” but you. It felt like a secret, a code, something special for just the two of us.

You have never once stayed the night, and that was perhaps when I started putting the pieces together.

We never met each other’s friends, never held hands in public, never had sex facing each other.

Perhaps I’d always known, deep inside, why you never called me “Alex”.

With “Moff”, or “babe”, perhaps, you could tell yourself you were dating a regular girl. The girl-next-door you could bring home to show your parents. The girl you could settle down and start a family with. The girl you could grow old with.

You can never call me by my name, but I’ll always be Alex Moffat, the boy who fell in love with you after a single handshake.

______________

There’s a reason why I’ve never called you by your name.

You probably realised it early in our relationship but being the kind and gentle soul that you are, you never brought it up. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop but it has been months and you never said a word.

You remind me so much of him. You have the same eyes, a beautiful pale blue around the edges of your irides with spots of brown towards the center. I’ve always loved your eyes. I could never be the first to look away, for staring at your eyes made me feel like I was floating in the cosmos, drifting, unanchored, drowning. “Partial heterochromia”, you said, abashed, as you tried to shield your eyes from me, “probably genetic because my dad has them too.”

Your shoulders are almost identical, skinny and slightly stooped, except you have a little mole on your left shoulder and in the throes of passion, I sometimes find myself biting into it during sex, perhaps, subconsciously, in an effort to rid you of the marring on your skin, and make your shoulders identical to the ones I loved so.

Even your mannerism, the way your long fingers move in gesture as you often do when you get excited. So expressive, so elegant, so like him. Even your slightly awkward gait, the way you slouch and seem to close in on yourself to make yourself seem smaller when you’re unsure and hesitant. On you, it seemed like a sign of uncertainty, but on him, it looked like a quirk, a characteristic trait, but I guess he has had years on you, growing into his own skin.

Even your idiosyncrasies, the way you absentmindedly correct someone’s grammar mid-sentence, and when I call you out on it, as I often do to him too, you shrug and say, “society as we know it would collapse without some semblance of rules and regulations, and adhering to proper grammar structure is my way of keeping the world’s balance. That’s just how I was raised. A grammar superhero.”

Even the way you look at me when you’re aroused, eyes blown, with quick flutterings of your eyelids, and the slight tilt of your head tells me you’re thinking about sex. That soft moan you make when I kiss your collarbone, how you’re slightly ticklish around your lower back, the way your sensitive pale skin flushes with beard burn when I get a little overzealous, but always hidden under your clothes, out of sight for he has trained me a little too well to leave visible marks above the collar.

I knew who you were the moment I saw you at the orientation party. How could I not? God knows he has mentioned you enough. Our conversations almost always include you, and I admit, I’ve always been a little envious of the love between the two of you, and even though you were never where we were, I’ve never felt good enough for him, worthy enough, special enough. A dirty secret never is.

I’ve never called you by your name because that’s not what I called him. I’ve never called you by your name because a part of me knew that I would be shattering the illusion that I’m with him instead of you. WIth the number of similarities between the two of you, I have always gotten away with imagining him in your place. It’s sick, I know, but it’s the only way I can have him, and I’ll have him any way I can.

We bumped into him, the other day. A sick perverse part of me wanted to be called out, for you to realise what I’ve been doing behind your back, behind his back, for me to finally embrace him in broad daylight, for him to accept me for who I am, and for him to accept himself for who he was, and has always been. But I saw the look of sheer panic in his eyes, gone in a flash, too quick for you to have picked up. So I plastered on a fake smile, shook his hands, and told him how you great you were, all the while referring to him instead.

It was in that moment, I think, that he realised what I’ve been doing, how I’ve been treating you. It was in that moment that he saw me for the disgusting, vile creature that I’ve always been.

I only call you “Moff”, for that’s what I called him too.

He tried to make me call him by his first name, when we first met, when I was but a fresh-faced undergraduate. But I couldn’t, for he will always be Professor to me. He had laughed when I called him that in bed, chiding me gently for reminding him of his age. So we came to a compromise, last name at the very least, if I could bear it, he teased. I found that I couldn’t. Moffat sounded too stuffy, too formal, too distant, and so I shortened it to Moff.

Maybe if I had met you first, I would be contented with what we have. I do love you, but it’s a warped, distorted kind of love, a love that’s an extension of the all-consuming love I feel for him. A love that makes me giddy and breathless, at being given the chance to imagine what it would be like if he were twenty years younger, if I had met him as a peer at a campus party like how I met you, if we could be with each other the way I’ve been with you.

I can never call you by your name, because you have never been anything but Moff to me, and I will probably never love anyone the way I love him.