Entry #9

   Someone I knew died recently - he passed away noiselessly in early October and it was not until recently that word of his death spread quite like fire from mouth to mouth. Or, to be more exact, from screen to screen. In a year full of ups and downs, heading from one small disaster to a new one, this one death shocked and shattered the quietness of quarantine. 

  I thankfully spend the second quarantine by myself, in complete isolation using the excuse of empty days to empty my mind and balance whatever there is left of it after a roller coaster of a year. A lot of things remain unprocessed and I do wonder not just when the world will go into some sort of balance but also how long it will take for each community and individual to do so as well. In a state of collective trauma that varies in levels, reality is sometimes difficult to stay in touch with. 

  And that is exactly how I have been experiencing life lately: in a state of disassociation as if most components are not real, as if we have entered a parenthesis that at the end of we will be able to go back to our lives as we knew them from before, except not all components of our past will be there. And this crisis has pointed out all the many ways in which our previous reality was fragile at best.

  But I digress. On a quiet evening in Athens, looking at the building from across the street at the opposite apartment, death slid quietly in my DMs. For the first time I realized that there is no normality to go back to. For once everything opens back up, whenever that happens, whenever we can hug friends and acquaintances that we see on the street without wondering whether or not we have exposed each other irrevocably to harm, we won't go back to life as we knew it for that life will no longer be there. Going back to our favorite places, the bars and schools we frequented, we will realize that stepping out of our house will also feel like stepping in a photograph with holes in it. 

  We will go back, maybe, but not all of us. 

  And it makes you wonder, who will I go back to? How long and what quality of time do I have left with people I love? How have I been using it? How will I use it? Time feels more and more elastic but more often than not it's as if we're experiencing it on the verge of breaking. We feel the cracks around us seem to thicken, how do we grasp life truly back? 

  I struggle for the answers.

  I have not found one. 

  I hope you found the peace you craved in whatever you went. 

Entry #8

  I was not aware that the closing of a door could have such a finite feel to it. And yet looking back all the ends almost always include the closing of a door; the door of the airplane as it shuts closed, the door of your previous house closing after you have handed in the keys, a taxi door, a class-room door. Sometime the sound of the door does not accompany the ending itself, it is only later, when you return to your current adobe and you close the door behind you that you even become aware of an ending. And more often than not, those moments are hardly melodramatic.

  When he left I closed the door behind him in relief. It does not bug me in the slightest to admit so. This was an ending to our chemistry, the thing that had been building up under the surface and had to be released at some point. And once that door closed he was back to being himself, another man, in a way a boy, in many ways lonely. I have tenderness for the lonely people but I do not delude myself with what is an extent of a need and what can be rooted in genuine emotion. And I felt relief for once the line is crossed and you see what was on the other side you can comfortably go back and move on.

  When I closed the door behind me that day, I looked around at was my new house and could not help but think back of another house into which I had entered with a feeling of elation, with so much positive feelings for what the future would hold. This now, this was a different matter, a different feeling. It was the first time I moved in someplace feeling near sick to my core, disillusioned, tired and wishing to be away from every one. I still think of those moments with a bitter feeling, sometimes the bitterness is directed to myself.

  When I came back last night and closed the door, knowing that in the next three weeks I will be in complete quiet, with very, very disturbances from the outside world, I was filled with bliss. Things are never allowed to be quite so simple, of that I know. But the bliss was there none the less. The present situation removed any need for a pretext, for a reason to sit back and remain reserved and keep my mouth shut. And with that I drew in a deep breath.

  And I allowed myself to plunge inwards.

Entry #7

 On Sunday mornings, I almost feel myself again. I woke up surprisingly early, surprisingly with ease this morning. I made coffee and cleaned the house, I took down most of the winter clothes and re-arranged my wardrobe. Yesterday the chest pain didn't go away until I lied down to sleep, yet I drifted fast and deep. I woke up feeling more like myself, part of the anxiety melted away with the night. I know my job is slowly sipping the life out of me and I know it's unlikely that it will get better. I know that the anxiety will have me back by the throat once tomorrow rolls around and I cursed for not noticing sooner that I am running out of my melatonin pills; since I started taking them, I sleep better on most nights.

  I ate breakfast, then lunch around noon. I have left the covers outside in the sun to be aired. I ate with friends twice this week and this gave me joy. I like having people over and feeding them. There's something about sharing things you made with people that is full-filling. I sat on my arm-chair by the balcony doors, this chair that I have come to love so much, and read. In some ways, in my head, I have created in this weak even though my soul was bleak. On the hours when I fall, I fall hard. And then I get back up by myself, stumbling along the way. I struggle to find peace, yet I recognise it at once when I come across it.

  There's only peace in learning and in standing still. In staying in quiet places, sometimes sunny and sometimes not. There's peace in grievances shared with people who won't judge you for not being well, in the moments when you can speak of your pains without having to be told what you already know, that things could be worse, indeed they could, but that does not make many things better. 

  I hear the rustling of the leaves and I know, that as time goes by the ties I have with this place are being severed one at a time. I am shedding the person I used to be. 

Entry #6

   Finding a way though the rumble is difficult - perhaps it would not be so if my own mind was not so filled up with rumble itself. But so it is and through all the debris I try to locate what pieces are still there left to picked up, though I have to admit that whenever I do come across one I spend quite some time pondering over it. wondering whether it's worth the effort to pick it up or if it's preferable to stay without it, even if I remain "incomplete". 

  In the mornings I manage these days to wake up somewhat more easily, even if the nights are heavy. I have positioned my mattress near the window so that when the sun rises its light washes over me. When I get up I drink some water, then pick up the bedcovers and put them out on the clothing lines so they hang over the balcony in the sun. I sit down to read some times, depends on how long I have before I need to rush to work or prepare food or something similar. I put music on, I use my cds so that the computer will remain off. I try to study and to stretch. I try to think my thoughts but not follow them down slippery paths and to reach out a little bit to the people I care about. I am trying to take away things from my house again - slowly but certainty the space is beginning to fill up and it is causing me to feel distaste, the mere thought of having to pack all of them next time I leave is giving me a headache. At the same time, I kind of enjoy having this space - some days it feels more like my home. 

  It's a bit easier to control and understand my mind on the days that my phone and computer stay off longer - it does mean I am getting even lousier at answering messages but at the same time I feel less miserable and can concentrate somewhat better. It becomes easier to put order in things, to find time for a book, for creation. It also means I am left to face myself more; but in truth I do not know how to manage all this pain and anger that I see before me. The anger is mostly directed to myself, for the times that I let down others and also me, for the times I turned a blind eye to what was happening instead of standing my ground, for the times that I believed staying quiet could ever be my saving grace. I shift through all the pieces and wonder what could I have done differently. I look in the mirror and wonder whether I like the person that I have now become.

  I grew bitter and harsh over the course of the spring and summer. My mother's eyes are full of alarm, I managed to water down my tiredness in the past couple of months but whenever things quiet down, I feel it rising it back towards the surface. I used to fight it back towards the bottom but the older I grow, the less energy and desire to do so I find. Perhaps that is a good thing: a way to mentally declutter, internalising how I try to treat the space around me.

  As the days become shorter and the cold of the oncoming winter arrives slowly but surely, I find small moments of personal blossoming. Perhaps all this bitterness, in time, can turn into a kind of resilience. It is hard to believe and to have hope, so I don't, but in a pragmatic way I try not to refuse the possibilities.

Entry #5

  I wrote a long entry and erased it. For in reality it wrote of nothing, it listed of things and things and things and really, some things don't matter all the time. I don't know in what words I could express my emotional state - I decided to try some new things out, picked up some classes, asked someone to come over, small steps towards learning how to express desire and needs in a form that is not shaped by the wishes of others. The excitement of those small steps, the fake decisiveness of them somehow balance out the rest of the bad stuff. Perhaps I am learning in some ways how to be more myself.

 I am trying to grow into a morning person - in truth I have never held anything against mornings, except for the fact that they were usually required for the sake of the dictates of others and that the night has always had it's own allure and quiet in it. Somehow the  poetry of life seems to have dried up by 8a.m. Nonetheless, this year the nights have grown more difficult and peace is hard to find in them. At least lately I can sleep more easily but sometimes I need to know that I will sleep next to someone else once a week. I don't bother with more than that, the shared intimacy with a trusted person is enough to anchor me down a bit, to calm the fears that sometimes assail me in the dead of night. 

  And this year has turned out so weird - aside from the sexual contact, I was so used to share physical contact with some people in my life. Now I hardly embrace my parents, I hardly see friends, let alone touch them, occasionally I meet people by chance while coming back from work and there is that moment of silence when we're both thinking whether we should hug or if that will break through too  many barriers of the other person. All this physical disconnection, mixed with the cracks and rifts that bloomed this year, they have left me so bereft, so lacking, that the mere fact of sleeping next to someone once per week helps balance me out. I know that part of me wants to chase after the chance of adding more nights or risking adding more bodies to the nights just in case the warmth will bring more quietness with it but I know well enough that that is not how it goes. Trust of others will slowly be built but in the meantime, endlessly filling up what little space I have to myself with non-sensible distractions is pointless. Still, I'm thinking about daring it here and there. Even if only for the temporary relief.

  So many little dares for some temporary relief.

Entry #4

 I am often thinking about the way I express myself on this blog - as with every little thing that I use for self-expression, I am hopelessly analyzing whether I am doing things the right way. The proper way, to be exact. I used to write everything in broken, disjointed lyrics, trying to give a sense of flow to the written word that would soothe my mind a bit. And I love writing that way still, except that these days I need to write longer sentences, endless paragraphs. It might be because I have grown more quiet, it might be that I have for a long time now been too quiet and now everything is coming out in waves of words that in total might amount to very little for anyone else but to the present me they feel like part of the solution.

  Healing is a slow process. The reconstruction of bones is more painful than I would like to admit and I want to rebel against that pain and go back to hibernation. I am not sure I can afford to though. I spend most of my time in my head and through all the writing that I have been doing in the past few months and year I have managed to notice some patterns - would it that that would suffice. But alas, even clarity comes in waves and though some problems become clear one day, their cause might be gone back to obscurity the next.

  I have found during this time that I am more obstinate in my misery that I thought. I have always perceived myself as a person who lacked any significant backbone but the way I end up going in circles that I know are bad, the way I refuse to voice my needs, they must be also a true sign of stubbornness. I grasp on this refusal with claws and teeth, holding on to it in hopes of shaping it into something more beneficial. I try to use the anger and the despair as fuel to help me move forward, to break through.

  Like I said, healing is a slow, imperfect process. Sometimes it's expressed in asking someone to come over for pizza, even though you're afraid that they will be too bored and say no. It's being able to steal some sleep while the body of an infrequent lover lies beside you and wake up and realize you're more well-rested than all the times you slept longer but alone. It's realizing you're able to sleep next to a lover again and spending the morning basking in their warmth, their soft caresses. It's accepting that it's ok for two weary, lonely to share intimacy even if they're not in love, even if it's not forever. It's allowing yourself to cry when alone when the other option is to never cry at all. It's not smoking for two months straight even though you really want to because you decided you should poison yourself less. It's struggling to find a way out of your retail job.

  I did not find much peace in my escape with nature, as I was hardly left alone. In spite of that, there were moments, quite a few of them in fact, where my insides found a harmony, a balance. I particularly remember sitting at the foot of the rocky cliffs, my feet digging into the sand, staring at the waves, taking in the vast openness of the sea, breathing the salty air, thinking of every little thing and then slowly, everything fading. Washed away, or maybe eroded by the salt. When I was a kid, the moment I got my knees scraped or a cut, I was instructed to run to the sea and drench my wound, for the sea would purify it and make it heal faster. The more the years pass, the more the wounds differ from those I carried as a kid, yet the sea seems to purify these ones too.

  Looking out at the sea, I thought of nothing, I chased after nothing, I was simply there.

  This morning I woke with a slight chill on my skin, the sunlight piercing through the curtains and aiming straight from my eyes. His presence next to me was like an anchor to the presence. Even in his sleep, if he was not pressed against me then his limbs would be outstretched, so that we were always connected. Small carresses, intimacies, I rubbed my nose and lips against his skin, luxuriating in the contact. I was, in a different way, present, thinking of nothing, focusing on the privilege of touch. I laid down earlier and realized that his smell has lingered on the pillow.

  And in the turbulent days that consist this year for every one, in the process of trying to dress wounds that I had thought had turned into scars but instead have been left bleeding, that is a small consolation. One that is all but insignificant.

Entry #3

 I have moved to this new home fairly recently. The walls are not as empty as they were in the first month and slowly the space is becoming more and more easy to use for my own needs but whenever I am outside of it I find myself dreaming of the moment I will leave it. The thought surprises me; I know I did not move in the best of psychological states and that I felt - and still do - forced to do so by the circumstances. But I am not blind. I can see that when within these walls I can breathe more freely than I have done in a while, I have seen some healing effects already. The willingness to create is slowly finding its way to the tips of my fingers enough, even on days when work has crushed me, even when sleep has repeatedly evaded me. I feel perplexed towards the eagerness to go and finally I have reached the conclusion that perhaps it's not the house - for the house feels like a haven, welcoming amidst all the noise and the chaos. A part of this emotion is the resistance to heal, for one can grow tired of healing, sometimes the tiredness is so familiar that it's easier to manage, and perhaps it's just that this city is finally kicking me out. I wonder sometimes whether it's the city life in general. 

  I often get into arguments with people over my headphones - I never buy expensive ones for I know that they moment they break I will immediately buy new ones for I can hardly step out of my home without them. The city has become too difficult over the year to tread around without the aid of music. The constant optical and hearing assault has proved to overwhelming and the headphones have been the only thing that has helped. They say, don't walk around listening to music for you hear no thing but the truth is that without the beat, ringing in my ears, bringing me back from sleep, I can hardly keep track of what is going around.Outside of the city border it is not so. The sounds there are more discreet and I am glad for them, relieved in their harmony. 

  I will get out of the city for a couple of days, back in the nature, I have an opened bag on the floor, trying to figure out what to place in. Except for a few changes I mostly want to bring notebooks and books, different pens, maybe another camera. I wonder if there's much of a point in bringing a camera, often the mere sight of it makes me feels guilty. This used to make me feel good I think. 

  Now photographs make me sad, like they enhance the outline of every piece that has been cut off from my life.

  The pictures of others serve as evidence, but evidence of what I know not. Their happiness, or perhaps the fact that there is not place cut out for the person I am presently in those pictures. I don't much care about the past me. But I do care about these photographs, more than I care about. I care about the fact that I am not in them and that I have become so superstitious against them.

  So I am battling against this superstition the only way I know how to: by running right at it. Slamming my body against its body until one or both of us break. I feel a near desperation at the thought of touching all the things that made me feel alive in the past and the camera is one of them. I need it in ways I never figured out in the past and that I don't care to explain in the future. Sometimes realizing that something turns you into a better version of yourself is enough justification.

  I will take then, at least for these few days, the different parts of me that used to make me feel better and carry them out of the city, among the pine-trees, sitting down and letting their scent envelop me any chance I get without the disturbance of people. I will try to concentrate this feeling, extract it into something precious, something to keep me going in the coming days, for I know many of them will be hard, cruel like the month of April in spring, bitter while pretending to be sweet and then stopping even pretending.