vetometo

[vetometo]

Early mourning brings no worms

Ever grieve something while you still have it?

It's a difficult thing to describe; the anxiety it stirs up inside you, the way it sits like a stone in your chest.

The way it feels like you may be losing it, just by thinking about it.

You ruminate. Over and over, it climbs up your throat. You chew on the bitter taste it brings, and you swallow it down again, until it eventually reaches its smothering point and you no longer feel it pressing up against your lungs. Eventually you know relief.

If, though, later.

If you do lose it...

As it happens, or when it settles, that reality,

You mourn the time you would have grieved.

There's a peculiar irony in that, I think. Having mourned something too early and leaving yourself in its grave.

[vetometo]

Milestones

Strange, how you just keep existing

How life offers you little to no pretty bows to wrap your stories with

Does everyone live this way I wonder?

Do they also divvy it all up into deadlines and important dates

Manageable chunks

And flounder in between?

Do some people live continuously?

Am I the outlier with my intermittent springs?

And I'm awake and aware through all of it, that's the thing

There's respite to be found but no sleep in the spaces I've created

So I stay, thinking, turning, examining

And await the new milestone to greet

[vetometo]

Free to be

There's something... inherently freeing, about not being tied down to some fixed place. Or maybe it's being tied down to multiple places, I haven't quite figured it out yet. I exist in all of them at any one time. Every time, I am me. That doesn't change. But I am also not me.

I am the smell of candles and the sound of a welcoming meow, a distracted hello called out from a busy living room. I am the cafe we decided to pile up in this time, molded by life but the same, falling into old conversations. I am the hand I hold quietly under the table, petite, thumb running over soft knuckles. I am my best friend waiting with an exasperated but pleased hello again, hug only a little reluctant and very warm, because her love is more often felt than heard. I am my grandmother, who also exists outside of physics, because her homes are her, she is not them. I am my father waiting over an idle game, eyes tired, smile brighter than the sun. I am my mother at the balcony who somehow senses me coming before I know I'm on my way, and I am my family as we step home again, uncaring of where we've ended up this time.

See, sometimes I wonder who I would be, if my life happened in places quantifiable by distance or location. I see people who live that way and feel envy, occasionally. And then I step into somwhere new, because I'm always stepping into somewhere new, and it's not long before I think another place to be, and I'm home and whole again, until another place joins me.

[vetometo]

a gray symphony

It echoes, you know

The silence in the empty space

Can't call it silence at all, not really

When it rings in your head so persistently

Have you ever lain in bed and listened to it?

That song it writes, all by itself

Stretching time until you're not sure how many verses it's been

Have you found yourself, there between the quivering beats?

Existing

Just that, existing

No more, no less, a gray area where you *are*

Or not, it depends

You're not quite sure what form you take there either

What your hand would look like as you stretch it towards the ceiling

Schrödinger had a point, after all

We can't make sense of the boundaries we can't percieve

Even as they pound in our ears, no matter their fury

Does it settle somewhere between your ribs too

Occupy the space your lungs were supposed to fill

That emptiness, the absence

Of something, you're certain, but what could it possibly be?

Come on, silence, speak to me

Chatter away, you're free

Tell me how to breathe again

Before I forget completely

[vetometo]

Onward march

We are, all of us, time

It sits within us, stiched into our fibers

When we push, it is what pushes back

Takes us by the fabric of our being

- willingly or not -

And marches us forward

It does not do this invisibly

No, it's there, right there, screaming to be noticed

Etches itself into every cell we lose

Carves its name on the scars we have to gain

We are not beings that can exist separately from time

So we must be part of it, and it must be part of us

Where do we draw the line?

[vetometo]

Here goes...

Running, running

It's incredible, the constant stream of tactics and anti-tactics your brain can cook up when you get pulled so far into your escapist habits you start escaping the part of you that's scrambling for a way out.

There was a time I thought noticing it would make all the difference. I wasn't necessarily wrong, either - it's just that real progress prefers winding paths and does its best to wriggle out of your grasp at the first chance it gets. Sometimes it succeeds. Then it's a matter of how long it'll take for you to catch up, because you will, in the end. It'll tire itself out in the same way you can succumb to exhaustion. There will be times you tire before it does, and sit down on the dirt as you watch it gleefully put more distance between you, wondering if this is the last time, now.

Eventually it'll turn around - when the novelty wears off, you'll hear the sigh, see it standing still, waiting for you to follow. You can take the invitation then. You'll be allowed to approach, feel better as you close some of that yawning distance, before the chase begins again. Not in earnest, though. Not for a while. You might notice it stumbling more often (just a little too exaggerated to believe), or huffing and puffing (loudly, audibly) as it complains about the terrain you know for a fact it can fly across in its sleep. So take the mercy for what it is, and pick up the pace.

Or you can stare back, blinking heavy eyes, waiting right alongside it to see which will break first. Then you might see it hesitate, shifting on its feet, before it takes a tentative step in the forbidden direction of back to you. Each of these steps will be a gentle push, though. Back on the path you collapsed on. You'll feel the drag as the first step calls to you, begging to never have been taken at all. So you must take a step too - on you hands and knees if need be, just forward, toward the concerned dignity being laid down before you. You might feel a tug as it takes you by the hand and coaxes you back onto your feet, checking over you all too indiscreetly. No words are spoken, but you think you read what almost looks like an apology in its eyes, sorry, I thought you could keep up, I didn't see the tremble in your steps. You'll be led forward then, gently, in the right direction. You'll recover the distance you lost, flatter terrain now that it's known to you. You'll take back the lead without realising it. Then it might start all over again, but not yet. For now, it'll be an eager hand you hold instead of a slippery wrist.

Be careful with this option, though. That first step might not be towards you if you're unlucky enough. If you sat and waited too long before. If it sees you lose resolve too many times in a row.

Then you might really be left in the company of the enclosing walls.

I haven't felt the biting chill of the lonely draft yet, thankfully. But it's an impending thing. It looms, just out of sight, as a reminder of what's at stake. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

It doesn't mean it can't get suffocating at times.

So can the compulsion to drop it and run, though. Into the numbness I find respite in, into all hours of the night, eyes burning and ears ringing. It's not incentive I lack, but that begs the question of what, then? so I dutifully (dumbly) ignore it, gaze flitting over words and images and characters and stories that only silence my mind for as long as I have my eyes on them. So I have my eyes on them a lot. I shove the ticking clock out of earshot, and the ticking clock shoves back. A boxing match always ongoing in the back of my mind. My bets were and still are on the timer. The blind beast has held on much longer than I assumed.

Maybe I need a more solid grasp on what reality is. Seems obvious but is it, really, when I can live vicariously through snippets I absorb through pages or a screen? What will tether me long enough to lay out the future I've been making a mad dash towards? Because things are only going to get harder from here, and here I am, trying to type out my frustrations because the alternative is an embarassing breakdown that'll do more harm than good.

It's the little moments, I think. What makes it real. Not the plot points or the major twists or the big, emotional minutes that brand themselves into the forefront of your memory, but the insignificant ones you file away as routine. The aimless walks and peeling potatoes with mom and getting up every hour because you need something to keep your mouth busy, damn it, or you'll go insane with restless energy. The menial tasks. The parts you don't include in a story that's told and not lived because they're a given and your brain fills in those gaps on autopilot but they have weight when you realise, when you're conscious of hey, I'm in one now, a little part of being alive. Those motions you go through even on days you're not fully there. Because they're anchor points.

Maybe if I have more of those. Anchor points.

This may have been a half-decent idea after all.

I'll see you in a standalone moment.

[vetometo]

Hello.

I figured it was about time I said something here on this app. You can only scroll mindlessly for so long, after all.

Sometimes, when my mind's too full for its own good and I really feel like the speck of dust I am to the universe, I jot things down. They're inconsistent, messy, and occasionally unclear in meaning even to myself, but they've helped me balance things as I'm handed new plates to stack onto my full hands. Like shaking out a box marked 'miscalleneous' to make it easier to sort into neat little compartments, I've been keeping most of these writing sprees tucked away in my notes app. And every so often, I'd debate whether or not to put them out into the void for others to see and possibly connect to.

Today I'm tipsy, sentimental, and staying up way past an hour that can be considered good for me, so here we are. I'll be posting some of the stuff that comes to me in this little corner of the internet, so feel free to have a look around.

In the meantime, I'm going to sprinkle some pieces of myself here, see how things turn out. It's nice to meet you.

(As a sidenote, I'm new to this tagging business and therefore shit at it, so sue me.)