#I always feel so meh about spotify wrapped because I always already know everything

[kimtaegis]

today‘s good night post

[howam1feel1ng]

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Walker: Hey, tit head. Wake up. I'm on my way, if you're still asleep I am eating your oreos!

Yeah that sounds about right. Too bad for him, I'm wide awake (with my Oreos safe for another day). Even thought it was 11:36pm on a Tuesday, we had plans. Nothing out of the usual, it's actually become pretty routine by now. A few nights a week Walker picks me up when he gets off work, and we drive to a local park. Its called Birch Woods, but everyone calls it B-Woods. Walker keeps his bong in the backseat and I bring my weed. We usually sit in his car, his playlist quietly humming, just smoking and talking.

The sound of my phone pinging again snapped me out of my thought process as I realized he was waiting for me in my driveway already. With my family all asleep, I tiptoed quietly to the front door. I silently slipped out of the house, slipping my black Converse shoes on, folding the heel down.

"There you are, I was starting to think of the sneakiest way to break in," he groaned smugly, starting the engine once I buckled myself into his Chevy Cruze.

"Yeah because that won't concern my neighbours," I shot back at him, already scrolling through his Spotify account to find my go-to playlist of his. The car slowly fills with comfortable silence, aside from A Day To Remember harmonizing.

"Aaalright we are here. You got everything?"

"Yes sir," I retort, "this ain't my first rodeo."

"Yeah yeah, you say that, but you /have/ forgotten before."

I roll my eyes, grinding the herb to a finer consistency as Walker empties his water bottle into his medium sized bong.

We lock eyes quickly, but just as fast as our eyes meet, they pull away. This has been happening for a while- him returning my looks. Me looking at him... well that's been happening for more than a while.

I can't help myself. The way his hair catches the sunlight on a summer night. The way his freckles melt perfectly on his face. His eyes... There aren't enough cliche words for his eyes.

"Mind if I go first? Work was a bit of a shit show," he informed me.

"O-oh, uh, yeah! Go ahead," I blabbered, fumbling to string a sentence together.

"Cool, thanks."

He lights the bowl, while Say Anything chimed in the background. The flame from the lighter matches his hair, vibrant and breathtaking.

He inhales slowly, pulling the smoke into his chest. Then he exhales, seeming to have a weight lift off his shoulders. I'm mesmorized. I don't know why or even how, I've watched him do this hundreds of times. Yet he never fails to make the simplest of actions look graceful, poetic.

"Here you go," he coughed out, passing the bong to me. I mirror his actions, taking in the substance. We both have high tolerances, so it mostly just mellows us out.

"So what happened at work?" I questioned.

"Meh, same old bullshit. Ian no-showed, and next week we're getting inspected. No way in hell we pass," he explains, as he reaches to take back the paraphenelia.

"Fuck, that's stressful. I'm sorry," I respond.

He looks at me and shrugs, saying "It's all good. How was your day?"

Well to be frank, a lot of my day was spent thinking about being wrapped in your arms, or you pinning me against a wall.

"Fine, just got ready for work tomorrow and cleaned the house. God, being an adult is boring sometimes," I expressed.

"Yeah I agee. We just need to make some sort of fun future plan to look forward to!" he suggested.

"Okay, okay. Any ideas?" I say after exhaling another breath of smoke.

"Whaaat about... A weekend at a cottage with the friend group?"

"Wait, that's actually a really good idea! Walker, you are a genius," I rave, beaming at him.

"Why are you acting all surprised?! I've always been a genius," he gloated.

I rolled my eyes at him again, laughing.

We locked eyes again, but held our glance for just a second. I could feel my face revealing my truth, that I was mega crushing on my best friend and could barely look at him without turning red.

"... Hey Ash?"

"Yeah?"

He paused.

"I, um... I forgot to bring a drink. C-could I borrow yours?"

I laughed, replying, "Yes doofus, here."

We continued to bicker in the safe space of Walkers car, until we were clearheaded enough to head back home. He dropped me off, and saw me off with his typical line:

"You're my favourite person, bye!"

[passingideasofaredballoon]

Angry Questions / I’m still thinking.

Hey there.

Happy Friday night.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything here. It’s been busy - real busy.

This week, someone mentioned the way they were always writing (and rewriting stuff) in their head. It’s something I could relate to immediately - the idea of dwelling on feelings, emotions, arguments - enough where you’re constantly writing a dialogue in your head. To explain it to yourself, or to explore how you’d communicate it to others. What I usually challenge myself to achieve is this - how do I write it in the way that best explains it? The way that allows people understand what I’m thinking, but also goes that step further and makes them feel part of it, too? So I think about it. Over and over. Until it makes sense, until it’s warped enough to make some sort of forced sense. Any of those.

It reminded me of why I started to write here. I found that I had so many of these things that I wanted to write down or tell people, and I couldn’t stop thinking about them. They’d take up so much space in my mind that I could think of little else. They got more and more frustrating. I found that I couldn’t stop them from becoming warped and overblown, unless I did something with them. I couldn’t use a journal because it was something that someone could find easily, and I couldn’t delete things I no longer liked. So - the secret blog was born. I could write down my thoughts. I could challenge myself with them, and each time, I learned to like my writing (and myself), more. Mostly, it let me be finished with my thoughts after that.

I have to write a speech this weekend, and I’m faced with a challenge. I’m overloaded. I’ve had too much going on in my brain, and thinking of a cohesive way to say anything at all (never mind anything even remotely important) is overwhelming. I sit down to think about what’s important to me and what I’d like to say, and I’m bombarded with too much. I realize that I’m angry, and confused, and frustrated, and stuck. Then I push everything I wish I could get out into the back of my mind, because none of those things are news to me. I know my feelings are there and there’s nothing I can do about them, so I tell myself to move on. But the realization keeps coming back. I am frustrated. I am very, very upset. And I’ve overwhelmingly sad. It’s all I want to talk about because it’s everything I’m feeling right now. I have to fight against myself to think about anything else. Since it’s been so busy, I fight it often. I direct my thoughts toward chemistry, toward biology, to working on math. As someone who thinks all the time, I don’t leave myself any time to just let my thoughts go. When I do, they come back to this. So for almost a year now, I’ve been stuck on the same thing. I’ve been reworking it, and warping it. And mostly, pushing it down until all the things I want to say become frequent mind pop-ups that I’m too desensitized to acknowledge.

So I asked myself what I needed to do tonight. Sleep was the first thought. Force myself to watch a movie was a second. Then I had the urge to stay up late and let myself think. It’s going to be short because I’m already tired. But at least it’s a start.

I need to start somewhere. And I think that’s by giving myself the time. Slow.

I’m too upset by my Spotify wrapped. I can’t believe I’ve been stuck here for a year now. It makes me so, so unbelievably upset. It makes me sad.

Do you ever have bad days? Days where your brain feels fuzzy and nothing goes “well” and you just feel meh? I don’t mean bad days where anything happens, like a fight or accident. Days that just feel off. That simply don’t feel good, even if they should have been good?

I’ve had many good moments over the past year. Times when I’ve felt understood, where I’ve felt connections with people and I’m incredibly appreciative of them. But I felt like I’ve had a string of those off-days for a year now. I’m frustrated at why I never get to feel clear headed. Or why I never get to feel happy for more than hours at a time before the moment ends. I’m tired of feeling tunnel-visioned in, where everything outside a certain radius feels blurry and strange to think about. This whole time period feels horribly, horribly awful. I forget that it’s not supposed to feel like that. Good moments help, but they don’t fix that overarching feeling. It only makes it hurt more, the minute those moments end. It doesn’t change the fact that this time is never supposed to feel so awful, as a whole.

I’m so, so sick of this. I’m sick of being given piles and piles of work and having to simply sit down and work through. I want time to think, and time to enjoy my friends before I have to go home at the end of the day and sit with my own frustration again. I wish I could have a break, or a clear future to look forward to.

I miss my freaken friends. I miss having the opportunity to be part of their lives. I can’t stand watching them do things without me, not because I upset that I’m missing out, but that I never had the choice. I’m tired of working hard to finish my homework on Saturday and still have it bleed into Sunday. I miss going to school and being able to feel better when I was there. I wish I didn’t spend so much time driving over November break. I had the satisfaction of earning my licence just to have the gut-punch of not being allowed to use it anyway. I’m tired of feeling like my effort is worth nothing. It’s just a pile of work that never ends, and the idea of working toward a break that never comes. It’s the same thing over and over again.

I miss listening to music. I miss having time to listen to it before I have to take out my headphones for class. Or because there’s so much to do and my head feels like it’s filled with cotton. I miss having interests, and things enjoyed doing. I hate that I’ve done nothing but work on surviving for the past year, and it’s still too much for me.

Is it too much to have hoped that things would be different by now? Is it too much to ask to see my friends? To have a day where my brain feels normal? To wish I could wake up in a different room, with sunlight coming through the window? Where instead, I wake up and everything feels just as weird and grey and dead. I’m tired of feeling dead.

I feel lots. It’s a more of a good thing than a bad thing, and I firmly believe that. But it makes it hard to live like a robot. I want to have experiences, and feel things, and listen to people, and help them, and have them help me. I can’t keep watching everyone leave in their cars with their grade 12 drivers licenses without me. I can’t keep listening to people talk about the things I’m unable to do. I feel sick, and helpless, and small. I know I can do absolutely nothing to change it, and I’m so unbelievably upset that I’ve been unable to do anything for (literally!) a year now. I can’t keep watching myself getting held back, where I’m stuck far away from (almost) everyone that makes living feel worthwhile. I don’t want to live in a hole anymore. I’ve been alone for too long. It makes it hard to feel (or think) like myself. I sort of miss being myself, too.

I’m sad. I’m really, really sad.

I don’t like that it hits like a gut punch, every single day. I wish I could have some time where I don’t have to feel so pathetic and so stuck. I wish I could take a break from the world just so I wouldn’t have to notice the things I can’t do, so often.

I’m jealous of the people that need things and can have the world suddenly bend around them. Even if someone wanted to fix it for me, I don’t think they could. Some of the things seem fixable. Most of the reasons I’m sad are more complicated. Why is everything so complicated?

I don’t know what questions to ask. Why ask for help with something no one is able to fix or change? Why ask for friends to see me outside of school, as a special favour? Why ask friends to make those sacrifices to fill your needs when they don’t have the time?

Why does everything freaken suck?

Why does everything still freaken suck?

Why can’t I see it getting better? Why is the work only getting harder, and why am I getting slower?

I’m not asking for things to be easy and great. I’m genuinely wishing for things to not be bad.

Because they are bad. I’m acknowledging that, bluntly. Sorry.

Here comes the self-pitying one: why me? And why for so long?

Why does everyone else get to take drives with friends at midnight? Have a summer where they have cottages and go camping and stay up late talking together? Why do other people get to rest during the summer? Why can’t I have a single good summer? Why does everyone else get Christmas? Why do they get to be proud of submitting their EE, and why do they get to celebrate their birthday?

Did I do something to deserve to feel this sad? I don’t feel like I’ve justified any of the self-pity, so now it’s just guilt.

And why do I have to carry that too?

Why is everything so heavy?

I don’t know why things are still like this. It’s eating me alive.

Am I supposed to have done something differently?

Am I supposed to be here at all?

Or somewhere else?