series of confessions

a dissection (of myself)

I think about death sometimes.

I don’t think about dying though, I believe I’m still too young for my death to seem like a real concept for me. I think about death like a lonely child thinks about romance. he may look at other people in love and yearn for that feeling but romance is still just an idea, unreachable, unfathomable, something which only happens to other people. thoughts of death keep me company as i drag myself through the days, providing a sort of comfort to my endlessly restless mind.

the moment i turned 8, a creature crept into my body and nestled itself against my heart. a creature full of dread and desire. ever since then every step i have taken has felt like tiptoeing on the line of self destruction. one misstep away from the moment of disaster, alone to deal with my own nothingness. i fed the creature well, giving him everything i could with my own hands. i became a philanthropist in that sense. it grew bigger and bigger and bigger until my chest could no longer contain it. as i pen down these words, it threatens to burst out. my days are spent trying to contain it inside me, to spare everyone the ugliness, to become the martyr and save the day even if it is just by controlling my own kind of frankenstein. after all, the need to play the savior plagues me, an all consuming quest for validation haunts me.

words pour out of me like blood from a gashing wound, painful and out of control. I have to force them out, my hands turning wet and crimson with the outbreak. self destruction is not natural for humans and writing is not natural to me. i wring these words out of me, this unnatural act becoming a surgical procedure wherein each alphabet is a stitch for the wound

jia once told me that artists usually have two mediums of expression : one loud and one soft. for me, speech and dramatics are the loud, the performative while the soft one is supposed to be writing. it’s hilarious to me that the former requires pretending while the latter requires complete and honest baring of my soul. it’s like i carry the spirit of theater with me when i write, making my writing feel just like another performance to me. authenticity is not something i’m used to. i want to climb on top of the world and scream as loud as i can I AM NOT WHO YOU THINK I AM. i want the creature inside me to burst out and escape, to bare my reality to the world.

I dismiss the concept of God till some deep desperation strikes me. i don’t believe in god until i need someone to believe in, not a search for some higher power but in the hope that somewhere, someone out there will make it all alright. hypocrisy runs through my blood like a never ending virus, a sickness i conveniently forget about until its symptoms manifest in front of me. i pray to God when i write, i pray that my glass illusion remains intact.

art is what i constantly reach for, whether in the form of poetry or theater or music or paintings or films. i go through thousands of these things everyday, relentlessly chasing for one more thing to make me feel something. i don’t actually understand most of it, i have not yet achieved that level of intellect. the emotions these incomprehensible pieces of media are what i chase after, an effort to escape my own feelings. perhaps that’s the reason why i never feel authentic. how can i, when my life is just a constant race of running away from my truth?

i write because i am scared of irrelevance. i write in an effort to explain my existence. i write in a hope that somehow these words which i tear out of me will somehow carve a place for me in this world. writing comes to me like a toddler’s first day at school. a hesitant and slow paced initiation. yet, as the years go by, he stops shedding tears everyday at the bus stop. the loud refusal is replaced by a reluctant acceptance. i hope that with time, my writing learns to tolerate me and i learn to tolerate it . i hope a day comes when writing does not feel like war to me. it feels like my only hope for salvation, the only way for me to redeem myself in front of my eyes. the only thing that can curb that creature inside me.

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i am not proud of this.