therebaby

[therebaby]

odd! the way we grow. i'm not the same person i was last year, last week, even yesterday. some days i don't even know who — what — i am, what i have become. and i think i'm okay with that. sometimes i even have the privilege of forgetting how things used to be — the quiet nights sat precariously on my bedroom ledge, fourteen floors high; the gnawing anger-turned-weight-turned-void trapped behind my sternum; maybe even the bruises that curtain beads leave behind. i don't really know what to make of it now, where i am today. i'm not ready to truly face the person i was (what a turnaround, from analysing and picking apart everything i ever did) and i don't think i ever will, perhaps. but it's a start. that's not to say i'm exceedingly happy with how life has turned out, let's not thank the lucky stars just yet, but... progress. it's something, always, to be grateful for (or is it?)

[therebaby]

9-12-22: i don't want your help (and we're a million miles away)

i feel... cold. not in the shivering-negative-degree-weather external type of frostbite-vulnerable-cold way, though the current climate really does not help in this aspect, but a sort of inward-facing iteration of a chill nevertheless. one that reaches its hands into your person, a frosty, lingering feeling that permeates the bone, seeps into the recesses, crooks, crevices of your body, leaving you feeling... ironically, hollow. it's not a sense of emptiness, per se, not a depressive numbness and carelessness like it used to be, god, i still feel things (well... sporadically. but it's far better than absolute nothingness), yet it's a force that leaves you almost... paralysed. this is a terrible depiction, really, but it's hard to recognise, and yet even harder to describe.

i'm trying to avoid cliched, cringe-worthy representations as far as i can, but... i can't think of another way to illustrate this feeling. it's like my being is... frozen, almost. i can feel my insides attempting to free myself of the cold, but the outside is, right now, frozen rock-solid. made of sediment-filled ice. impure. disposable. and because none of this is as it was, the void consumes me, and, maybe, in a way, i, it. i'll do what's necessary, of course, because i know what working with me in this state feels like and it's unfair to impose my burdens on everyone else, innocent as they are, but, at this time, it takes all of me to get things done. it's not like i want to be this way, but maybe i asked for it. 12-year-old me could attest to that. and i've always been one to revel in suffering, after all. i wonder where i get that from.

you asked me what was wrong. my answer is simple: i don't know. i've never known. it's been years. it's always been like this. it's a cycle, i know it'll pass. but, when it gets like this, it feels like this ongoing tidal wave of hopelessness, stagnancy, near-dissociation, a touch of guilt (about what? i have no idea either. still, it sits there, simmering, underscoring the lot) - i don't want to do anything, feel anything, be anything.

at this juncture, i've come to acknowledge that i... still exist during these times. i've not been reckless with my life, my consciousness, in years - as much as i wish not to admit it. (oddly enough, moving away from what i thought was a key characteristic of myself, albeit negative and a harbinger of terrible consequences, is far more... difficult than i thought. i haven't learnt to live without the thought at the back of my mind. i don't think i ever will. it'll always... be there; i remind myself of it - subconsciously, and consiocusly. it's self-inflicted, like it always has been. oh, how contradictory life and feeling can be) but to exist, as all things are in life, can be challenging, to say the least. i just wish you'd understand. i wish you'd allow me to work through it on my own terms. i don't need your intervention, much less your yelling, because i know myself. this has happened before - you know it, you've seen it happen. i know you're frustrated and, perhaps, afraid of what this might mean. i know better now. there's not much that can be done than sit through it and wait for things to thaw.

so here i am. trying. truly. i really wish, with everything i have, it was something you could wrap your head around, but i swear to god - i know how you work. it's not reasonable. it's not rational. it's a matter of weak will. i'm a useless, lazy daughter with her priorities all out of whack. and i apologise, from the bottom of my heart, for not being who you wanted me to be (... all the time? but that's a tangent to be explored at another time). i apologise for making it too obvious. i apologise for allowing myself to be this way.

but what if i don't want to be mentally, physically, emotionally exhausted after trying to pull myself out of it? what if i want to let it happen, because i know it's inevitable that it'll happen again, and again, and again? that it's a futile attempt to do anything about it, because trying to wriggle free does more harm than good? what would you do then?

i've figured it out, somewhat. i can do this alone. i can do this on my own terms. i always have. leave me be. you don't need to see this. i don't want you to.

you've never been of help in the first place, anyway, not in this regard. no one has.

[therebaby]

something something i am made up of multitudes

[therebaby]

e.n. walztoni

[therebaby]

[ID: doodles in blue ink of bugs, a flower, a person, a cross, a moon and star, and a tangle stim toy. there are phrases written around them in red ink: “so many bad things”, “I can’t read today”, “it helps to have an explanation”, “stimming out of frame in zoom class. I remember hitting myself under the table in biology in high school”, “that’s not right, that’s not true”, “I hurt my fingertips, I will feel better in 2 days”, “there is so much”, “hiding, very bright”, and “promise, promise” /end ID]

[therebaby]

[therebaby]

[therebaby]

prompt: knowing you need to change something major in your life, yearning for that change. But you cannot. Not yet, at least.

IF I COULD BE A DIFFERENT PERSON, I PROMISE YOU, I WOULD

@ineloquentcreature / bleachers / anne carson / gabrielle calvocoressi / alejandra pizarnik / euphoria (2019-) / bright lights (2016) / betsy dadd / susan sontag

[therebaby]

[therebaby]

[therebaby]

Who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me? A quote from Little Weirds by Jenny Slate engraved in a wooden spoon, 2022. instagram

[therebaby]

i am not a liar, and especially not one to myself. this is one thing i will, i must, stand firm on. you don't get to take this away from me too.

[therebaby]

thanks, costar

i don't have the energy to finish this right now but i'm leaving this here just because:

on funerals and fun fairs

my very first memory of my grandparents was when i was four. or five. or young, it doesn't really matter. we were going to disneyland. or, rather, i was going to disneyland with my 'REAL' family, just mom and dad. fake family i.e. grandparents were to stay behind because they were old and wrinkly and less mobile.

i didn't give a single care about these two strangers that didn't even speak my language, i just wanted to meet minnie mouse.

allow me to explain myself before i continue with this recount that seems to lack any semblance of empathy - i've never learnt how to articulate this sense of loss. not 'loss', 'grief', 'dying' loss, i'll get to that in a moment, but the perpetual feeling of being at a loss (for words, for actions, at the very least).

i think life can be tricky when you grow up far, far away from family. in the years to follow after that disneyland trip, you treat these trips like vacations, and merely treat the visits to the people, on their dying beds, as an inconvenience, perfectly incorporated into the itinerary your meticulous mother had painstakingly planned out. you make these house visits weekly (but, hey, fun, it's a different person every time), wear dozens of pairs of sterile gloves drenched in hand sanitizer, don surgical masks (before COVID!), and are told to put away your prized pink DS with pirated games because it's 'disrespectful'. you watch solemn, still hands touch frail bodies, listen to the incessant beeping of the heart rate monitor, and stand impatiently in the wafting smell of Hospital as your family bids farewell to this individual that will, really, only have their lights turned off in months to come. you receive almost-consistent news of loss and an outpouring of consolatory messages over the phone - detached, clinical, 'i'm sorry for your loss' - whilst you lay in bed and laugh at the performativity of it all; you never knew them even enough to remember their middle names.

i suppose i say this because, in recent years, i've experienced an increasing number of deaths, both second-hand (close friends' relatives, parents' friends), and first-hand (relatives etc.). and with every person that breathes their final breath, i wonder again, and again, and again - do we mourn because it is an expectation by others? i suppose funerals are for the living - i attend these functions to offer support to those whom have lost - but time and time again i see my mother, in particular, grieve as if she were immediate family. it pains me to see such efforts to keep up an image that was never really all that solid in the first place.

but there is this that shakes me, plants a seed of doubt in my mind - my grandmother, the last living elder of mine, will be cremated today. she died of pneumonia (of COVID, really), and i will not be there. and so, for the first time in my life, guilt festers in my gut like a blossoming, parasitic entity waiting for the chance to devour my insides, and i'm chugging everything from mylanta to amoxicillin to flush out the toxin. i didn't know her. i don't think i want to know her. but perhaps the fact that i've seen people mourn for their lost loved ones, and the fact that my father is there right now to carry out the funeral rites whilst i'm sat here in this ice cold room, on this comfortable bed, instead of amidst the chaotic, collapsing climate of hong kong drills a fiery sense of frustration in my bones, leaves me wondering [i'm tired and can't find it in myself to deconstruct this right now].

the kicker, though, was really how no one believed that i wanted to attend the funeral. but that's a story for another time.

i'm not so sure where i was going with this, but my point is - why? why do we do these things to ourselves and guilt ourselves into thinking the way we do based on a perceived expectation of how to react?

[there's something else here that should be written but i'll come back to this sometime soon]

[therebaby]

Danez Smith, from “acknowledgments”

[therebaby]

i don't have the energy to finish this right now but i'm leaving this here just because:

on funerals and fun fairs

my very first memory of my grandparents was when i was four. or five. or young, it doesn't really matter. we were going to disneyland. or, rather, i was going to disneyland with my 'REAL' family, just mom and dad. fake family i.e. grandparents were to stay behind because they were old and wrinkly and less mobile.

i didn't give a single care about these two strangers that didn't even speak my language, i just wanted to meet minnie mouse.

allow me to explain myself before i continue with this recount that seems to lack any semblance of empathy - i've never learnt how to articulate this sense of loss. not 'loss', 'grief', 'dying' loss, i'll get to that in a moment, but the perpetual feeling of being at a loss (for words, for actions, at the very least).

i think life can be tricky when you grow up far, far away from family. in the years to follow after that disneyland trip, you treat these trips like vacations, and merely treat the visits to the people, on their dying beds, as an inconvenience, perfectly incorporated into the itinerary your meticulous mother had painstakingly planned out. you make these house visits weekly (but, hey, fun, it's a different person every time), wear dozens of pairs of sterile gloves drenched in hand sanitizer, don surgical masks (before COVID!), and are told to put away your prized pink DS with pirated games because it's 'disrespectful'. you watch solemn, still hands touch frail bodies, listen to the incessant beeping of the heart rate monitor, and stand impatiently in the wafting smell of Hospital as your family bids farewell to this individual that will, really, only have their lights turned off in months to come. you receive almost-consistent news of loss and an outpouring of consolatory messages over the phone - detached, clinical, 'i'm sorry for your loss' - whilst you lay in bed and laugh at the performativity of it all; you never knew them even enough to remember their middle names.

i suppose i say this because, in recent years, i've experienced an increasing number of deaths, both second-hand (close friends' relatives, parents' friends), and first-hand (relatives etc.). and with every person that breathes their final breath, i wonder again, and again, and again - do we mourn because it is an expectation by others? i suppose funerals are for the living - i attend these functions to offer support to those whom have lost - but time and time again i see my mother, in particular, grieve as if she were immediate family. it pains me to see such efforts to keep up an image that was never really all that solid in the first place.

but there is this that shakes me, plants a seed of doubt in my mind - my grandmother, the last living elder of mine, will be cremated today. she died of pneumonia (of COVID, really), and i will not be there. and so, for the first time in my life, guilt festers in my gut like a blossoming, parasitic entity waiting for the chance to devour my insides, and i'm chugging everything from mylanta to amoxicillin to flush out the toxin. i didn't know her. i don't think i want to know her. but perhaps the fact that i've seen people mourn for their lost loved ones, and the fact that my father is there right now to carry out the funeral rites whilst i'm sat here in this ice cold room, on this comfortable bed, instead of amidst the chaotic, collapsing climate of hong kong drills a fiery sense of frustration in my bones, leaves me wondering [i'm tired and can't find it in myself to deconstruct this right now].

the kicker, though, was really how no one believed that i wanted to attend the funeral. but that's a story for another time.

i'm not so sure where i was going with this, but my point is - why? why do we do these things to ourselves and guilt ourselves into thinking the way we do based on a perceived expectation of how to react?

[there's something else here that should be written but i'll come back to this sometime soon]

[therebaby]

“I tried to murder myself: to keep from being an embarrassment to the ones I loved and from living myself in a mindless hell.”

— Sylvia Plath, from ‘The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath’,12th December 1958 (via derangedrhythms)

[therebaby]