The way out is in

 I have actually been writing a lot in my diary in the last couple of months and it's a little bit odd for me to see. I have not expected it of me, it has not always been standard procedure that I should fill up page after page after on daily basis. When I get I make coffee and in the meantime I drink a glass of water. I bring my diary and my pen to the kitchen table, I look out of the window and then I dive into the page. 

  I have always looked out the window or balcony door or any opening to the outside right before starting to write. Sometimes in hope that something will be distracting and enticing enough for me to focus my attention there, others as a look to the outside before I turn my look inwards.

  And lately my writing turns more and more inwards. I have managed to write down things that I have never dared speak out loud, things that hurt me deeply, ways I realised I hurt others. All in an effort to map out what it is that drives me forward but also to alleviate the pressure of what is in the past. The truth will set you free but it will break your bones. I thought that perhaps even talking could help but talking a bit about something is nothing compared to spilling your mind on a page, completely sober, in the morning of the light. When you talk with people in your social circle there's always a bit of a dancing going on and that, that always changes things.

  Writing is cathartic but I end up crying almost every day. None of these are the worst things that could happen to a person, why do they hurt me so much? I do not ponder this too much. We're accustomed to measuring everything, but I am guessing that there is no point in measuring our dicks in the unhappiness, our own individual burden to bear.

  Some times we bleed to death due to a million small cuts - the trick is to keep them all open, to never let them heal. Or to let them get infected and fester. There are so many things that I have not let go and it takes time and forgiveness towards myself to look at them in the eye for what they are. I am sad on most days but often a little bit of the weight has been lifted. Often I realise how many things stem from experiences I had allowed myself to admit they hurt.

  And in my vulnerability, that is scary and painful every step of the way, I am slowly learning to open myself up. I am learning to keep the most important promises of all: those to myself.

  I try not to kid myself that it could be any easier.

*

   There days when it gets difficult to remember who you are or what you want or why. I find myself often in such days and the past two years have intensified that feeling. On such days I find it most beneficial to seclude myself from outside noise - I suppose the one good thing about moving here is that there are much fewer people living in the neighborhood and noise has reduced quite a lot. 

  Nonetheless, I do wonder whether I have grown to become neurotic. On my down days I have difficulty doing the simplest of things, completing the tasks that I know down the line will bring the rewards to me, not only physically but also mentally. In a way I suppose it's self-punishing myself.

  Almost everyone asks me when am I coming back. I give vague answers though in my head it has become clearer now that I will not stay here long either, When I first came I worried that I would get stuck here forever and be unable to move away, stuck in the money that is better from my home country but with all the disadvantages my old life had. But now I know a year here will prove to be a miracle, I know for a fact I might not even stay that long. And the fact that I feel even that I have enough power to do that makes me breathe a bit better some days. 

  Hope is an odd little thing, is it not? Except I am not sure whether it's hope exactly. Just certainty I suppose that I will try to play whatever cards I am dealt with in the best possible way. And to hell with it. 

  That's what I think whenever I low, very low, as I am today. 

  To hell with it.

*

   I did not come to this land to find happiness but I had hoped indeed for some semblance of peace. I had hoped that in spite of the hardships some things would be prettier but often I struggle to breathe.There is one thing that I do to make myself feel better and that is the slow but meticulous closing of old things left open for far too long. Tidying up things I left half-done. And I hate cleaning up any mess that is not physical and I can not simply scrub away.

  I am in complete denial of the ways that I block myself. I have gotten better at some parts though and that alone does bring me some hope. But part of me loathes even starting things that I know will make me feel better. And I am alone here and do not know how to keep pushing myself. 

  I wake up early most mornings. I write, I try to find time to breathe. I started moving my body somewhat just feel a little bit better. During that I feel calmer and more in control and somewhat grateful. Still I struggle with my mind. But I try to push forward, even for a little while. I get up, make coffee, eat some fruit, write, exercise, try to squeeze in a bit of something else. I go to work, I rot, I come back, cook and go to sleep. I often lose a lot of time on the internet. I'm thinking whether I should just turn off my connection past 9p.m.

  I don't find solace in myself these days, that is all. I took all the loneliness and unrest from one place and carried it to another. And there are no distractions here to keep me from facing myself. So I try to find some for myself. How ironic and fitting at the same time that I keep on going back to all those things that hardly ever did me any good. I know what will distract me, what will upset me, I seek it still.

  That being said, I think I like myself better now. It took some time to look square in the eye all the time I let others down and even longer the times when I let myself down. And somehow I like me better now than before I left my home. And much to my surprise, I even feel glad for the bridges I chose to burn. I never thought such a day would come. I was prepared to mourn and mourn and mourn and yet.

  And yet. 

  And yet I realised that there will always be someone in whose story I am a villain. And sometimes I have been exactly that. And other though I have tried, I will not be viewed in any other way than the one comforting to the other person. Let them put all the blame they want on me. I have carried my own. And in learning to tend to myself, I have learnt to carry that too.

  I always thought that I would pray to go back in time to salvage some connections. And though I still miss them, I want to see them not.

  Not now, not ever again.

The house in mountain

   It's been over a year that my thoughts roam to the house in the mountains. The last time I went it was a couple of years since my aunt had died and it was the first time that I came across it with a door locked. The garden was in a bad state, nature and the garbage of neighbors and passers by both taking it over and the house was worse. I went up the outer staircase and went to the upper two small rooms, or what was left of them. There was a hole on the floor in the second floor and I wondered whether the roof would off soon too. That was where her son used to live and paint.

  On the ground floor I could not enter some of the rooms, the bathroom was essentially destroyed and the kitchen I preferred to steer clear off but the bedroom - in the past the bedroom and the living room was the same thing - was easy to access. Her bed was there and the heavy wooden drawers too - the top was marble and the wood was carved because in the past that was what you did when you opened your home. The previous time I was in the house my aunt was on the double bed, she was the cousin - or was she the aunt - of my grandfather and at the time both he and her son were long dead and she had been bed-ridden for years. She called for me to go close and she gave me twenty euros, for pocket money, old habits die hard and all of my relatives of her generation are adamant to give us "youngsters" pocket-money whenever they can. It does not matter if they are bed-ridden in a dingy little room with little light coming in from the shutters or if they can hardly cover the medicine bills. They will slip the paper in their hands as they shake yours, like the bribe of gangsters in the movies. 

  When I tried to back away and refuse the money she grabbed my wrist and insisted, I was surprised by the strength in the grip f a woman who could not bring herself to even rise on her elbows. Her eyes had a gleam like she knew that that would be the last time and chance she would have to gift one of the youngsters.

  She had a soft spot for my grandfather who was many years younger than her and she would always talk of his children in one group, their descent being the thing that characterized their existence. She would always include me in the group of my grandfather's children as well, among my mother and her siblings, perhaps because I was oldest. She tried to give us what she could. When she died, she left hardly anyone behind and I came home to find two big black trash bags filled with papers and pencil - supplies of her only son who died long long before. All the relatives went after he death to the home, to clean out (and I suppose to take) what was left with no-one to claim. Seeing as I was the only other person in the family who still drew, my mother requested these things for me. 

  I found it odd and unsettling but up until those two trash-bags I was completely unaware that my uncle used to draw. I knew he had married and divorced and drank a lot but spoke little. It was unnerving to be around him, his parents felt easier to approach. To my knowledge none of his painting survives. Among the papers I found a doodle.

  Standing there in the living room I recalled being a small kid and having my mother make me pose by the entrance with my aunt and her prematurely-blind husband. When I asked why she did it, she told me so that I would not forget and indeed I did not. 

  Three lives came and went and perished in this house and of them remains a few blurred photographs and an abandoned house in the mountain, trapped in the bureaucracy of the always expanding family tree. I longed for that derelict little house with its generous garden with wild roses and fig-trees.

  I sometimes long for it still.

Salt

   I feel sad here - the same kind of sad that I felt in my own country except the distractions are less, I have less access to things that bring me joy but the pay is actually livable. I suppose you can't always get what you want and in any case, everything takes time. Disliking the job means that I will need to find something else to latch onto for dear life and most of the activities - at least the ones involving people - that I had in the past are all but flourishing here. On occasions when I have been invited to social gatherings I have sat quiet, observing the people around me - they were alright but I hardly felt any incline of a connection and so I preferred to shut up.

  That's another thing that I noticed about me: I really did quieten down. I did not swallow my tongue, it is not the timidity of shyness and shame but the complete disconnection with the surroundings. Back home it was less easy to notice though I suspected it but here, in new surroundings where there's less noise coming in it's become more obvious to me that I have grown a preference to keep my mouth shut. 

  I like the balcony of the house. It does not have a stunning view but the area is not so packed with tall houses - in fact, it has less buildings in general and that leaves an abundance of sky there for me to observe at any time of the day. All I have to do is look out of the window. There are moments when I do exactly that and the expanse of it cleanses my insides. For a few moments I am brought back within my body and I am present and I almost feel hopeful, above the tiredness, above it all.

  And in those moments I remember of going to the sea and wanting to cry and join one type of salt water with the other but there were too many people and that usually brings questions. The hindrance of it did not stop the sea from lending its healing hand to me. As a kid whenever I went to the beach and into the water I would always feel spooked and yet would steal away moments away from others during which I would bring my mouth to the surface of the water and I would whisper my secrets and my thanks. I was naturally superstitious and felt that I ought to show respect to water; after all the sea is capricious, it can give you life and it can also take it away.

  Since no-one felt so present for me to say my secrets, I took my loneliness as far out as I dared to venture and keeping my head from the nose-up above the surface, I whispered it all to the sea.  

  And the sea lent its salt for the wounds to try to heal.

The "how are you"s never saved nobody. But they don't hurt either

   The 15th of August is an important christian holiday in most mediterranean countries and mine is not an exception. Though I no longer identify as a christian, many of my family members are tied to that day and besides we are always tied to the the rituals in our life. I tried calling them but they did not reply, perhaps due to the foreign number they did not recognise on their screen.

  It's been about two weeks since my move to a new country and on the outside I have been really lucky: we found a home easily and came across many people willing to help, in spite of the roadblocks that happen along the way (immigration has never been uncomplicated it seems and I have been fortunate.) The blessing of this has been remarkable, without it I think the last part of me would have crumbled on the spot. 

  I left the country while half of it was burning, watching image after image of forests and small towns being engulfed by flames as the fire progressed. A couple more femicides took place as well and though the new life here started as smoothly as it possibly could in my insides a turmoil took hold. I felt rage and the need to mourn rising, choking me and there were no people around with whom I could share how I have been feeling.

  And that has been the hard part: for all its smoothness, all that happened crushed into the pain of leaving my country not for chasing a dream but rather a sense of survival. And the pain was fueled further by all the destruction and pain I witnessed through the lens of others. And for now I have no space here to grieve, not for the future, my country, the things I felt being torn inside me.

  A few people have messaged me to ask how I am but for the most part the conversations feel almost hollow - there was too much in too little time and I did not know how to embark on this conversations. They were nonetheless appreciated even if I lacked words for answering. There is just one thread of conversation that continues to eat away at me and it's filled with goodmornings and goodnights and pretty much nothing else - I wonder whether perhaps neither of us is at fault for this. I'm working on auto-pilot, focusing on the task at hand and nothing further and he works an abominable amount of hours. When he asks how I am I can only say that I guess I am fine. I want to ask for more but there's hardly the space and time and, worst yet, I'm afraid that not only will I not be able to give any support but also that I will burden further and so I stay mute. I feel the silence grow further, every time he says he'll call but inevitably he never does.

  The mere fact that this hurts annoys me but I feel like I have been slipping back into known terrain, learning how to go about as if there never was another voice on the other side of the line and slowly I expect nothing but silence. I start to wonder who will write last into silence.

  At nights I have difficulty sleeping, especially since for now I need to share a bed until we're able to purchase a second one. That makes things harder because I don't have much personal space during the day and now I don't have ti during the night either. For the last couple of months before I left it was a similar situation back at the other home but all the new changes made the lack of space unbearable. Tonight's the first night that I am alone in the house and I have been almost praying that I will break into tears but instead there has been absolute silence. I picked up smoking again, it won't be for long so I allowed myself that one setback until I get some things back in my head.

  I waited for the tears to come but instead I sit in silence. 

  And again, I begin to write.

Packing a life and mind

   Packing is in itself a weird thing to do. Half a day goes by and the majority of your life is either in boxes or in a trash bag. The finalization of the date brought about a mixture of emotions - I cried a lot both for what I'm leaving behind but also for the realisation that with some very few exceptions that's not really a lot. Three decades of a life in one place and what is left? A pile of diaries, some books and three people that will miss you. As I started saying my goodbyes I realised that by the time I come back even that handful of people might not be around to see my return. I will exist either in small parenthesis for them or through my absence, my inability to be present. 

  "Sorry I wasn't there," the text wrote and I looked at the screen and it made me sad even further for when could he be present really? I realised I was angry at being sad, I am admittedly growing more and needy of his presence. Or perhaps I realise that that it's not quite enough as I want in my life. I think of my self as a luke-warm person but the more time passes I understand that I'm more "my way or the high way": whenever I try to be ok with the lukewarm thing that exists in the middle it's usually not nearly enough. I feel lonely enough by myself, there's no need for the supplement of other people.

  I might sound unreasonable: in fact I do realise all the things that are going on in the lives of others and too often I use them as the excuse for not getting what I want. The trouble is that I'm neither getting what I want nor making my peace with it, instead going back and forwards between two emotions, feeling guilty and anxious at all times. The problem does not lie with the people themselves, it lies withing me: there used to be people and things here that were important enough to make it easier to stay. At some point those things became so few that I chose to go because they were not fulfilling enough: I feel guilty for leave the few good behind but they can not make up for the mental struggle of this place.

  And I feel the same for many of my relationships: guilty that I do not feel fulfilled by them enough when in truth some times a situation is not enough to fulfill us. How do you know when to stick it out? Knowing I am not great at communication makes everything feel even more like my fault. To control one's own mind is the greatest asset but rather than control I strive to understand. I want to be absolute sure when I say that something is not enough and also that something is, in fact, enough, that it's not "settling".

  I always longed to be free from the restraints of my mind and this new move seems to be challenging what is and is not a restraint. I'm not living the kind of life I wished nor have I grown into the person I wanted - but perhaps this restraint can be the changing factor of what and where and I do things.

  I am unsure.

  I have cried and whined a lot these days - enough that I am tired of my own voice. I have also managed to push myself enough to go out some more, perhaps seize the day here while there is a day still to be seized. I am lost within my head and I write very little - a bad sign always, writing and working with my hands is what keeps me sane. I am scared. Scared of all the things I am likely to fail to do, all the situations I fear I will get stuck into.

  I don't know if I'm changing or not.

  I have been smoking a bit these days.

Past for future

   I don't write all this much these days - the space in my house is crammed and so is my schedule and, to be honest, so is my head. Everything is brimming with things all the time: they are like bubbles, in their enclosure there's almost always just air but when they're present it seems impossible, unimaginable even to try to remove them. 

  Departure looms like a ghost over everything and there's not much to be done about it - the race against time was there before hand but now you can trick your mind that you see a finish line. It's a sensation I had buried in the past and though I welcome it back into my life I dread that I won't be able to handle it as well, 

  You should learn to leave for the right reasons - the first time I had attempted to leave it was in a very safe mode, planned out and stuff and in truth I was running away from myself. I was aware of this too. Now I'm running away from the mess I have made in this country (and the mess they made of me) and the country itself. There are bleak days ahead, staying here is like having a choke-hold around your mind. There are moments when you're used to it but often it drives you into despair.

  A friend briefly returning from abroad explains how flat her emotions are in her new home of a few years, how people here feel everything so much more, the sparks are more present here than there - perhaps it's due to our culture, so open among all things, and our tendency towards tragedy but also due to the fact that we are, after all, also children of this land: where you grow it never leaves you, every little thing has a different way in your mother-tongue. And there are things that you can not find as easily when you leave home.

  But the problem is, she says, that the same environment that presents her with an explosion of emotions almost always propels her into despair: all the people here are drowning, the conversations, as stimulating as they might be, at some point inevitably head south into bleak visions of present and future. Our land can give you some of the things that you desire: but more often than not you will pay a heavy price for them, your health and mental stability among the sacrificed. 

  I have been thinking a lot about the connection of space and memory and growth. In the future I would like to be able to work on the land that my grandfather worked on, to preserve something of the past. As my relatives perish one after the other, so does the memory of the family. There are stories that have never reached my ears that die out with every passing year.

  I have been thinking about it a lot as I am preparing to leave for a new country: by leaving I am sacrificing the chance to understand the past in order to build a semblance of a future. 

A week in the woods

   That entire week felt like being lost in the woods. That's how it was being around him - like exploring territory half-known that in reality I had no idea what was hiding in it among the trees. It was a new experience to be around someone like this and being free to touch them. It was new to sleep so deeply next to someone else.

  Yes, forest is the right word to describe what my life feels like in this period of time. I feel lost in the woods, sometimes I can't make out the stars in the sky. It's not just the man on whose side I slept. If only it were a one-dimensional thing. But the woods can spread either way around you, thick with greenery that shuts out the noise and sounds of beyond and soon you hear nothing else except for the sounds of the forest itself. 

  I feel like a spider, not in the ability to weave but rather in having many legs. One is placed firmly in the place I live at the moment, the other in the country I'm supposed to move to in a matter of days. For a job I hate in a country I dislike, all for the sake of buying out my freedom in a year from now. Or rather a shot at freedom. 

  There's another country, to the west, and in it there's a village, and in an old house on the outer side of the village lives a man and I both wish and dread being there with him. In my gut I know it's too early, I know we're not even ready for ourselves, let alone each other. 

  And there's a fourth country, I don't know which it is yet, but another where I could run away and be whoever whenever. In every place I feel a stranger, in passing, not quite material enough. I thought of woods and I figured perhaps, in a year from now, it would be nice to move to a quieter place for some time - for a few months, maybe a year. Not a vacation but a journey in a way.

  More than a week, I hate single weeks, they are never quite enough.

Like water and wind

 The smallest things can trigger the realisation of just how much you've changed: a meeting that in the past you would have thought would send you into a possible down-ward spiral, a business venture that proved to be a waste of time, an act that fell into nothing, a ticket bought. Instead you take a moment to acknowledge that things did not go as desired or that what you thought would in some way touch you and yet it didn't and that is alright too. You realise that you're moving further from the person that you used to be and that perhaps you're healing and that shows in unsuspecting moments. 

  You realise you're ready to go too. For the first time in perhaps ever, you're ready to drop it all and really go. Not to escape but because there's hardly anything worth your time here so much so that you will step back from moving on. I look at my body a lot these days. I follow its lines. I realise it's the only home I've really got. 

  I make a mental note to call my family often. I've become aware of our time being limited as the days go by. If we argue on the phone I wonder whether I would want that to be our last conversation. I call them back. I have a certain guilt towards them, the more I grow the more I become a ghost in their lives but that's because for years I became a ghost in my life too. Learning to be present in my life means ringing them up more often than I used to. It means showing them they're in my thoughts more than I used to express in the past.

  I have not given up on people though it is true that I have resigned from them. When they ring me up I enjoy their company though I seek it much less. I feel like I am getting to know myself in ways I did not know I would choose to in the past. Solitude is necessary for that and company is useful some times, in the right ways. It's difficult to place your boundaries and after a life-time of not honouring them now you have to do it in absolute ways that for some don't make any sense. That's alright too so long as you accept the consequences and make your choices and honour them too.

  At times you will feel shapeless like water or wind, but determined nonetheless, full of possible force. You will accept and come to admire that too. You will lose hope, spread yourself thin and gather your self back into one. 

  It's alright for that to happen many times too. 

My aging hands

   "Oh you're growing old too", she said pointing at my hands. I looked at my hands, my trusted, sometimes pained hands and wondered what she meant. I noted the net of veins visible under the thin skin and figured they have come closer to it, sometimes they almost bulge under it. 

  "Do you mean my veins? They have always popped but I guess they do so now more than before."

  She has become obsessed with ageing over the last few years, noticing every little change, putting it under the microscope, reading in it the premonition of the gloom ahead. It did not concern me at first, mostly because we have a different approach to any signs of getting older: while I feel the pressure of the youth that's about to end, even the melancholia for it, sometimes I think: look, I grew old enough to get a white hair. The shadow of a wrinkle. I lived long enough for that to happen too.

  Whenever I see another sign of age it feels like my body is catching up to my soul - which saddens me because often I wish my soul would accommodate itself in my body, taking the time to be in the present, to breathe as light as I should. To enjoy the moment of the present. Instead I am almost always rushing, sometimes to reach others and other times to reach the idea of who I should be. I often think of who I ought to be according to society and it bothers - if I am not pleased with the world I live in, why do I feel my self lacking for conforming perfectly to it?

  The news is overwhelming, from Palestine to my country, to the other side of the world. It's too much to take in without being crushed by it, I envy the people strong enough to stand on their own two legs.  Forests are burning, the government is shutting down more and more places where people found either physical or emotional shelter and in the meantime we grow old and do not notice and do not get angry enough or perhaps we get so angry we drown in our powerlessness.

  She said "Some times I imagine our kids growing up and playing together like we did," and the thought of such children feels so faraway and cut off from us. I smiled and said nothing, the thought of a future where I want children and actually bringing them into this world that I have always longed to escape fills me with shame. Yes, indeed, children are the future, but I always believed that to take upon the role of the parent, one must always strive to make the world better for the future generations instead of dumping it on them and asking them to come up with the solutions. 

  We like to speak of glorious pasts but what of a glorious present?

  Ever since that conversation I look at my aging hands and wonder what small glorious and damning thing have they done today, yesterday, a year before that. My hands have caressed others and held myself, they have made things and washed dishes and cooked dinner. They have planted seeds and watered plants and turned pages and they have traveled many kilometres to hold someone and to trail their fingertips across their backs. They have stayed immobile and done nothing and not called the police, not pushed back, not resisted, not protected. They have typed out long and short messages and snapped photographs and carried furniture and built homes in tiny spaces and looked for the sun.

  My aging hands with their fragile, thin skin have carried all my life across. 

Stuck between the rock and the hard place

   That is how I feel. There is no right nor wrong answer - both are a trap and it seems to me that I must choose which trap to fall into. When I started facing the fact that I am putting off decisions indefinitely so as not to make the wrong one, I combated this instinctive response by jumping in head first, expecting nothing. And for the first time in a while, I get moments of clarity. The dread remains but there's relief in finishing something, no matter how small or big it was or how imperfect the outcome came. 

  I tossed the coin and I knew what the right answer was before it hit my palm, for I knew that I resented both options but one was an escape.

  It's hard to let go of the person I was and be the person I am and at least become friends with all that I need and want. I try to see the privileges that I have and use them to my advantage and it's a struggle to work through the fog of my mind. It's hard to see anything as a win if it's not exactly what I wanted it to be. If it's not even close to my dream. 

  I want to tear everything down and disappear. And expand.

Steps in any direction

   There are times when the mind easily forgets how many steps have been made. What exists only in the past is easily swallowed up by mist and the mind can be relentless in cultivating and keeping it intact. On days like this I try to take one minute to take some deep breaths. Locked by myself in the house, one would think that I would have plenty of time to do exactly that but my mind is almost always racing and breathing has proved to be the thing I do the least.

  I am almost always looking around and try to see what things no longer serve me and for once have decided that perhaps instead of just giving them left and right I might need to work somewhat more strategically. I know that sometime in the next two years I might need to move if I am to make any progress for myself: not to escape from something but simply to allow myself to follow at least one of my dreams. And perhaps to finally accept I need to grow. Seeing what serves you and what not sounds all big and flashy and shiny. In truth it's muddy and you will keep back-pedaling. I'm holding on tightly to the fact that I managed to distance myself from smoking for so long for the first time in nearly ten years: occasionally people minimize it because I was never smoking two packages a day but I know that I never lasted more than two months. I'm not jinxing it, just seeing it for what it is. Even if I back-pedal, at some point, eventually, in the future, I made it further than before. So I'm holding on to that idea. Quitting smoking was hard enough but I know that most other things will be harder. All the external little things are not what changes the bad seeds inside. They are the easy roots to spot but the ones withing you are harder to get a grasp of and, even if you do, there's just no guarantee that you won't pull out some good ones as well. 

  These are the things that keep me awake and accompany me quietly during the day. If I want the quality of my mind, of my life, to change, then I will need to learn to be forgiving and also to be firm. And I will need to choose consciously with which people I can grow and with which not. Sometimes, cutting out painful pieces means keeping intact you.

  

The resilience of a seed

   I went there so that we could work together: too many days locked away on my own, trying to work had set me on edge a tad bit too much. She said she had to finish two applications first and then we could get on. In the meantime I lounged on the couch, reading Benjamin's book on Baudelaire, her sister searching something on her phone on the other armchair. And there, amidst the noise and the light and the thought that I would certainly would have liked the chance to punch Baudelaire in the face, I was lulled to sleep. I slept deep and well, the best sleep I have had in weeks. I woke up in the morning well rested and thinking of flowers. 

  It is odd to always keep your life on hold: this prolonged pause of life difficult to measure at times. She remarked how a year ago these days I was at her home with them, my life already falling apart, the quarantine at its first days. I was a different, weaker more tender version of myself yet already tired. There was terror back then whereas now there is anger. The last year I feel like I have not existed in my life but it's effect is there nonetheless.

  I feel like one of the things that the pandemic exposed was the fact that I had not, in fact, been present in my life for a much longer period than I had realised. My mind had been too preoccupied with too many things to be present in anything. And every time an attempt to grow fails it hits harder than it should. On some days I feel desperate. On days like this it's difficult to hang on to anything that might help me feel better. It's harder to grasp the reality of myself. Breathing becomes erratic and I almost wish it was a sudden panic that would end faster even if it needed to be stronger for that to happen. 

  Losing myself in books sometimes helps but to be honest I would prefer to lose my self in creation: it has always been more effective to doodle than to chase after words that belong to someone else. And when I don't make things little else makes any sense. I'm trying to find interest in small insignificant creations though I always feel the pressure to make big and important things. But it is not always so: when you make as a calling to yourself, what importance does it have to measure up to others? Often I feel the desire to withdraw to somewhere more quiet, somewhere where I can walk without the fear of people, where I can watch the stars and gaze at the sea. 

  It's difficult to call upon yourself to hold your own hand. I'm saving money for a therapist - most of us should have gone to one even before this year started. And I try to remind myself that no matter how deeply I have been buried. I have always found the way towards the surface. I try to recognise in my heart the resilience of a seed. 

Entry #13

   I have been struggling, I am not going to lie. When I look around me I remember the itch with which I wanted to sell everything I owned when I first moved in this apartment. There are times when I still do. Lots of feelings that come rushing back are familiar to me. I try to get up in the morning, make coffee sit, write, study, eat something, resist taking take-out (I tend to fail at this one.) The other day I was coming home from the doctor when I spotted an orange-tree that has not yet grown tall, full of its white blossoms. Going closer I pulled down my mask and leaned in as much as I could, the branches engulfing my face, I took in the scent of the flowers. That was the most peaceful moment of the past ten days. There's not much else to tell. 

  It is hard not to be constantly down, I envy and admire the people I see carrying so much on their shoulders and still finding ways to stand up and keep going. Any step I make is small and trivial, I think I'm mostly crushed by my own brain and not reality itself. How does one go about building even a partial reality where they actually become the person they want? My mind is usually submerged in moments and fragments of the past or invents and play-acts fantasies to make the escape from the present possible. It is very difficult to be around my self sometimes.

  There are things I should do that I keep putting off - things that I do, in fact, want to do. They plague me the worst: how can I betray even myself so much? I make tea and get up to exercise when my thoughts swallow me too much. Sometimes it helps, others not. I make small progress. But every step is a step, is it not?

  Not really - that's the sneaky part they have not told you yet. Every step is a step and it counts for what it is but there's only so far you can go when you keep finding excuse after each and every one of them. 

  Some times, for exactly this reason, I push myself to go forward with doing things that I have not tried before; to be more exact, I push my self to go forward and fail. And see that I survive. That it did not, after all, kill me. But I emerge tired nonetheless. 

"Go inward and choke"

   It took me nearly three weeks but I finally managed to wake up again at 6.30 - to get up, do the laundry, make myself a coffee, omelet for breakfast, dishes, sit down and write and then work for two hours. I've fallen in a misshaped kind of loop that I would very much like to blame on the quarantine but really, it's in my head. The quarantine feeds it.

  The thing is, I love the night in all its aspects and somehow watching it fade feeds me with a sense of calm - I dread the darkness sometimes, though it generally hides me, I feel that there's nothing to hide in it presently and maybe, annoyingly, I need the sun more at the moment. By the time the night falls my head is hopelessly immersed in fog. 

  So I have tried to get up in the morning - it's not so much about the number but it's also about it too. I've found that when I wake up early and keep my phone turned off and my laptop away from the socials time goes by differently, more slowly. I almost have the ability to perceive time in existence rather than something that is always at my neck, always rushing and pulling me along. I do not try to fight time but rather to understand it better and see it in relation to myself. To not take it too seriously but also not to disregard it either. I figured out and accept that I am, in spite of it all, full of ambition but at the end of the day I feel content if I have been present in a day enough to feel time go by rather than perceive it at something that slipped right through my fingers.

  Take care of yourself, your mind, so that you can take care of others too. The isolation sometimes drowns me but the isolation has also saved me in so many ways - I have however pushed people too far away and now I don't know how to be in their presence. Rather, I don't know how to be present without having to pretend. I take solace in the fact that for years I have drowned within the waters of my mind and that in spite of not asking for help I managed to somehow find the surface and somewhat pull my self ashore. I slip back in the murky waters often, I berate myself for not having asked for help but if I overcame the worst part then I can hold on some more. 

  I can shape things differently. 

  The introspection helps, the understanding, the acceptance - but they are only half the step. One has to start with small steps before jumping. Not to be cautious, but rather to give time to the muscles to rest and grow strong. I take care of the house. I do little things that in the "grand scheme of things" are nonsensical, perhaps practical in their own way but definitely the smallest of details. I find satisfaction in them. I try to gather strength.

  I try to talk to people when I am not too exhausted. I let him come close when I dare, he will maybe come on Monday and it's been a year since we met and that scares me. Do feelings perceive the distance or are we too lonely and desperate for some warmth that we let messages fly over electrical signals and travel for a few nights of shared life?

  Oh well, it is what it is. I let the relief overcome me.

Dead end

   I watched the snow melt outside, little by little, some of it preserves in nooks and corners here and there. I watched from my window and I did not budge, not until I had to make a new cup of tea. The pause has been necessary but it has not exactly been good. I manage to sleep more but every day is full of headaches - and the more time passes, the harder it is to put my mind in one singular action. I feel trapped. But that's not new: the problem is that I have no idea what to escape to. 

  I want to roll my eyes at my own thoughts at this point - I whine a lot and though I know that at this point the entire world is united in one united whining, I want to take a moment and step back and see beyond my shitty job and feelings of meaninglessness, what things do I have that I am grateful for?

For the apartment I live in: We have had a rocky start but I am putting effort in it and it has loyally provided me shelter.

The health of my loved ones.

The three loyal friends with whom I rarely ever talk.

The parents that try to love me as best as they can.

The man who will come to see me soon.

Actually, the few people who read this  blog: I have not kept up with numbers but some of you have stuck around for quite some time. I truly appreciate it.

The morning light.

My books.

These are all in all the core of what I am grateful for.  

I put one foot in front of the other. I mostly fall into puddles. I try to start again. I cry a lot at times. I try to take care of myself and am in full denial about it. My mind is still cluttered. I dislike the majority of the things I see around me and thus look inwards to see how I can perhaps start changing them from within.

I miss touching. The smell of orange blossoms - the feel of the wind on my face. The world is being deconstructed right under our feet and we're hovering, unsure of which way to move towards. But today, in this moment, I'm grateful for the precious things that amidst the chaos allow me the semblance of balance.

And I contemplate burning every screen I own.

This is an aimless post. 

To take care

 The are

many things

running

running 

through my mind.

Most of them

of

little value.

I try to 

value

my body

amidst all the chaos,

the only home 

a person has.

Taking care

of yourself

in reality and not

by substituting

the missing or

the painful

parts

is a difficult

choice

to make.

Entry #12

   I want to take photographs - it is an odd realisation to have. I felt it last night while taking in the few people surrounding me. I wanted to photograph their existence right in that moment, hopeless and in semi-darkness, semi-drunkenness and still able to laugh. The room was filled with their smoke, amazingly enough I abstained from touching a cigarette and that in itself is perhaps the most promising way to open the new year. The heaviness has not left but it felt good to share it with a few others and to sleep on the couch while another person slept on the floor and the other two in the bedroom. I woke up a couple of times but I slept peacefully for the most part. 

  Around midnight people started yelling and screaming and she hollered back to them while hanging her body out the window and we consumed whiskey and daze. There are many ways to be dazed and it's good to not always do it on your own. And it was so weird not to be alone last night after the year we passed. We're all people locked in our homes and for just a little while the four of us gathered in one home.

  I don't believe in new beginnings. But I am hoping that I will grow gentle again and that the bruises will hurt just a little less.

  This morning, in my house, I danced in spite of the despair.