#I am learning so much my brain is swollen. I love linguistics but I don’t have the mind for it

[athetos]

Also yes I’m reading Babel by R F Kuang and I’m hooked I did not expect to get this invested as I’m not typically a fan of alt history or any period pieces but i feel like ive been to 19th century Oxford like I’m a dark academia blogger who ships lord Byron with Percy bysse Shelley. I’ve heard so many conflicting opinions on this book I know it’s very divisive but regardless of how I much I enjoy it once I finish at least I can impress my friends by reciting the etymologies of random words.

[towardmyself]

and somehow, this, again

nostos, return home. and algos, pain. our English word for remembering isn't even Greek, it's Latin. and it doesn't even mean what it means. it means mindful. to return something to one's mind. a healthy interrogation of the language of how i hurt. depression is also from Latin. to press down. alcohol from Arabic. pain from the Latin word for penalty, it's original definition being the suffering inflicted from punishment. I've been listening to John Mayer's Born and Raised album a lot recently. our word for heart is old English, Germanic. we are a language of borrowed and stolen and misused and misinterpreted and misspoken and mispronounced and misrepresented other languages. i do not like this nostalgia. to what home am i returning? and why does it pain me? and for what am i being punished? the word breathe is old English. this is perhaps why i use it so much. i know exactly what it means because it has meant the same thing from the very beginning. breathe. breathe. breathe. i google everything and always. dating someone with major depressive disorder. dating someone with ptsd. dating someone with alcoholism. i think my partner hates me. am i a crazy girlfriend. am i being manipulative. how do i stop my depression from making me a bad partner. am i a bad partner. partner, Latin for partition, later changed to joint. ah. yes see that makes sense. the subtle optimism hiding in linguistic history. the subtly of optimism itself maybe. the root of forgive is a bit complex. the Latin origin is to give completely, without reservation. the first form in old English inspired the sense of "to forego the desire or power to punish." this bizarre deja vu. already seen. i sometimes think "fuck" so loudly i think everyone around me heard it. i heard my roommate having loud sex with a nice girl and after they came to the stoop to so she could smoke a cigarette and i paused writing this to talk to them about Alaska and dogs. earlier that same roommate said he laughed at himself for trying to use his key to open an unlocked door and that was one of those times i thought "fuck" very loudly. John Mayer's Born and Raised reminds me of that time i visited Emma in Davis so we could go to his concert and i wore a black free people dress and did my hair in a cool braid and wore bronze eyeshadow and it was so hot and then me and Emma got into a huge fight and i threatened to drive home that night because at that time i was mostly anger erupting from, i don't know, is there some Greek word for not knowing where or what home is. i know how this might sound but Midas must have been very lonely. not like Medusa. i guess you can find ways around looking people directly in the eye but a touch? sometimes i feel like this. like what or more specifically whom i touch becomes brighter but i feel this incessant loneliness. i told Kate some part of me closed last Friday after i picked her up from the bar and where she was i found instead just rage erupting from fear erupting from, i don't know, some deep and old, old pain. and i mean pain in the original sense there--suffering as punishment for some offense. anyway some part of me closed. and i can't force it back open. i'm pretty sure i have forgiven her in the not seeking power or desire to punish sense. but maybe not in the giving without reservation sense. i cannot respond to anyone's texts lately. i pick up the phone less and less. all these pieces of me are closing, like a maze crumbling in on itself. or the scene in the spy movie where doors are closing from the ceiling one after another after another until the final run and slide under the last one. i am scared of my own muscle memory around things like this. my first best friend, my mother, my first love. how quickly i accept what i cannot and everytime i remember, it feels nostalgic. and then i wonder "is this home?" apparently we seek love we are used to, good or bad. sometimes i think i am going crazy, and so instead i close more things inside me. what a cool trick, that Midas touch. but don't you think he must have felt such a terrific loneliness? reaching out to touch and never feeling anything soft or warm or alive or reaching back. or maybe he did, in the brief moment before it turned to gold. do you think that would be worse? and everyone thinking how splendid it was, all the magic he had at his fingertips, all those things he could transform with just one, even accidental, encounter. i miss my family. the boom of my dad's laughter and the muffled frenzy of his love. the stillness of my mom when she is thinking and her palpable fear of destroying the family she built. the brilliance of my sister and her quiet peace when we are all together, and smiling, and not fighting. the way we all laugh after screaming. i know i am still a scared child. i have always been. i know how my pride grabs my voice whenever i am hurting. i know my biggest fear is asking someone to love me. i know i confuse that with showing them how. i am still afraid of the dark. i am still afraid of what i cannot see. i know i love her. i have for a very long time. i feel safe when she is holding me, but this is not how i know i love her. i know i love her because she leaves garbage all over my apartment and it doesn't bother me. well it does but in that way you don't really feel. sometimes, she is a stone wall of anger. sometimes, i look at her, and i see who i was before i learned how to unclench my fists, and i get scared in that way we all do when we see our reflection when we weren't expecting to, and don't know who it is for a moment, or why we were frightened. i am on the other side of the stone wall now. and i don't know how to be. and this makes me love my sister more than i ever thought was possible for anyone to love anyone. emma, how did you love me when i was so lost in myself all i could do was hide and bite and run? how did you possibly forgive me for all my rage? is it in our blood, Emma? or is it one of those things -- like, yknow, when you just know. like, you somehow know you're not lying to yourself? you know you love this person, and this person loves you, and somewhere, in the matrix of their brain they are trying to find their way out of, they are trying to tell you they love you too, and it keeps coming out twisted and sharp, and even though you know it should hurt, or even when it does, it mostly just makes you want to just hold them tight, and say "i know, i know" like you do to dogs, and "i am right here, i am right here, it's not a lie, this is real, and i love you." emma, how do we forgive ourselves? is it just one of those things? emma, she sleeps in my bed with her jeans on, the jeans she wore out into the world that day, and sometimes puts her shoes on the bed, and leaves the cap off my eyeliner every morning, and still, Emma, and still i love her. i am going to sleep now. tomorrow, i work all day, open to close. and at the end, when my feet hurt, and my knees are swollen, and i smell like pizza, i will collapse onto my bed and dream about realizing the doors are unlocked, and I've been fumbling with my key, but instead of making me sad, it will make me smile. and think of sunflowers and the piano in my living room and how much love i have to give. and then on Saturday, i will try to open again. slowly. and one inch at a time. it is amazing, how much easier it is to open, when you remember how much you have been loved. and now i think to myself, nostos. this is my home. the opening again is always painful, but the return to all this love, it's just one of those things i guess. it's just one of those things.