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I had a really, really, really good day today. That hasn’t happened in a while and I’d like to recall the day in every detail I can muster. Very much like Sisyphean Dreams 2011-style. I miss those.
I woke at 4:40AM. This is notable because I went to bed at around 2, 2:30AM. I had to finish my 268 word essay for my professor. Let’s hope my favourite professor of all time decides that he appreciates the derpy effort. Anyway, I woke up on time! I got out of the house at 6:13AM and I got to school around six minutes before first bell. I’ve only been late once in the entire week. This is groundbreaking news, folks. Ever since second year, I’ve been the kid who was expected to come in 80 minutes late to her hour and thirty minute class.
History of Civilizations class was okay. I mean, my professor has this really heavy American accent and he keeps trying to speak in Filipino and Chinese (and fails horribly and hilariously!). He’s friendly and he tries to put in American culture in his pro-Filipino lectures (which confuses me). He dismissed the class and then I went to Writers’ Guild tambayan and hung out with Angie, Jeff, and Eri for a bit. It was a very interesting conversation (we even fangirled about Genderbent!Adventure Time for a while). After that, Eri and I got a frappuchino from Starbucks (because I had my get one of equal or lesser value! coupon). I kind of forgot that my next class was at 11:20AM and I thought it was at 11:50AM and when I looked at the clock… 11:15AM. I ran to my Philosophy of Person class like I was that Stylinson kid and a bunch of crazed teenage girls were running after me.
I got to class on time and my friends then started talking to me about how they wanted to drop the class because they were scared of the professor. Class started and man, this guy is just… my mind still hurts. He makes me think and I absolutely love it. I love the class, despite the challenges it presents. I pay this educational institution to learn things, not to get an impressive transcript that I can’t prove with wisdom and knowledge. I love this class. I absolutely adore it. My friend, Miko, and I then went around campus to collect signatures for Team Communications and that was exhausting. I spent a bit of time reading my readings for Narrative Principles class, despite being exhausted from lack of sleep and physical exertion.
I got to Literature Elective (Creative Writing - Poetry) class soon enough and I love the class. I love love love love love the class just… oh my gosh, I love this class. I like how my professor is one of the most highly respected literature professors in my university and he acknowledges my existence. He calls me by name and he’s only known me for a week. I loved how I figured out the metaphor for the end of “First, a poem must be magical” by Jose Garcia Villa and since I’m a novice at the art of poetry, that felt amazing. Also, he had this exercise wherein we had to look at a bottle of water and think it was something else.
Person 1: It’s a dumbbell!
Person 2: It’s a paperweight.
Person 3: It’s a telescope!
Person 4: It’s a three second shower.Me: … It’s a prison for a water nymph.
Me: It’s a portable ocean.
Me: It’s a person. Because, y’know… it’s 70% water.
I felt rather clever and accomplished after that class. Then came the time for Narrative Principles class and that has to be my favourite class because it’s taught by my favourite professor of all time. It was a really invigorating class. It was enlightening and interesting and I like how I made people laugh with my little comments that weren’t supposed to be heard by other people. I swear, my state in lethargy is probably the closest I will ever be to being high on something. I liked the recognition and the fact that I had something somewhat relevant and intelligent to say in my classes today. It made me love being a student and I always will be. I love learning things about my craft, about the world, about my mind and I just love learning in general.
When I made my way home, there was a traffic jam caused by the heavy rain. I fell asleep on the bus and I think I bumped my head on the shoulder of the girl who was next to me. I woke up, apologized, and she said something about how it was okay and that I could sleep on her shoulder if I wanted to because she could see how absolutely tired I was. That was extremely kind and I’m not used to kindness from strangers. This makes me happy. Help a mermaid and she grants you a wish, show kindness to a writer and she’ll make you immortal.
This was a very good day. I hope you had a good day too. Praise God for this day of little joys and wonders. :)
xx
Jonnah.
- I have no clue why I’m commemorating this.
- But I am.
- It’s not like it’s something that should be commemorated,
- But I remember the first line of the start of that chapter.
- Now I’d like to think about how grateful I am that it’s not over.
- Three hundred, sixty five (or six? I’m not a mathematician!) days ago, this happened (x) and wow. Another three hundred and sixty five days before that, I met you for the first time and… wow.
- Plot twists.
This is ironic to say but I am sorry.
I was not in a state of mind wherein I was completely aware of everything that I was doing or saying or thinking. I went on a whim, my heart had taken over. I’d like to say that it does not happen often - that I am a rational, intelligent creature - but truth be told (how ironic), that is the state of mind I am most often in.
I do things, I say things without thinking and most of the time, I get away with it because I’m a learned liar. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a good liar. I was a terrible liar as a child - my stories too extreme to be real. I grew with age and so did my storytelling expertise. My stories had become real and I was then, the fictional character. What keeps me from fessing up to the countless little lies I’ve told? Too much. Not even a season of The Secret Circle can cover all the skeletons I have buried in my closet. An overused cliche? Yes. For the sake of this, kindly forgive my puns and wit. Believe me, I try hard enough to be witty and it would be nice to just let me feel clever.
Last night was an example of that. I’m not saying that the fit was a lie, that the pondering on a giant tub of Tylenol near a broken sink was a lie - no those were truths. The lie was the almost. I never would have done it. I’m selfish but not selfish enough. I’m brave but too cowardly to end, too hopeful in the “what if”. I love the control, I guess. I love thinking that if I just do this one thing, it would solve everything. If I just go away from the world forever - all of my sins would have never impacted anyone, affected anyone, created an effect on the world (which, existentially, I could never really do anything to harm or help the world, the reality, that we live in). I wanted to believe that this one simple solution was infallible, inconsequential, irrefutable but the simple truth is - the truth resists simplicity.
(I love you, John Green.)
The simple end of my life would not end nor erase the turmoil that I have undergone and that people have gone through for me. In fact, ending all of that would have been wasting seventeen years, three hundred and something odd days of work just to make sure that I’m still here - that I have clothes on my back, a roof over my head, a book under my nose, and a new episode of Game of Thrones by day’s end. Just because I disappeared or stopped suffering from personhood means that the things I’ve done (both good and bad) will disappear along with me. They don’t. I’ve neglected to practice something we’ve both been taught over and over again - we are free to choose our choices but never choose the consequences of our choices. The end of my personhood would not eradicate anything I’ve done or all my reasons for doing. They just become unknowable answers to questions asked over and over again.
I am not proud of confessing that I have contemplated on suicide. I’ve considered it. I’ve wanted it. As you so blatantly pronounced in your last words to me over the phone, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” (Well… not really. You gave me the verse, though. … Only it took me a little while since I heard “Matthew 4:37” and there is no Matthew 4:37 when the verse was actually [I think] Matthew 4:7.) Wowza, bucko. What a way to send a mentally distraught, possibly suicidal, seventeen year old little girl to bed. I’ve apologized and you’ve forgiven me and even though you are way too good to me, I’m going to stop with the sorrys now. You know I am, I know I am. But like you said, what’s an apology without change? Not to downcast you or anything - that’s how I work. I respond to that and you know that. You’ve taken the time to know that and for that, I applaud and thank you. Not an easy feat. Here. Have a biscuit.
I don’t want to die. I really don’t. I’m just a selfish brat that way - I do not like pain. I’m not a masochist to enjoy feeling overwhelming senses of guilt, ickiness, and remorse at 11 in the evening while responding to nice anonymous messages. I don’t like it when things askew from my plans, I don’t like it when I’m wrong. It’s one of the many, many things that are wrong with me. I also use words wrong and sometimes, my grammar and punctuation are iffy. Also, I just learned that “I forget” is grammatically correct. I’m not perfect but I pretend to be. I do it because I don’t think I’m worth it. I do it not because I want attention - though I did tell you that, didn’t I? - I do it to prove that I’m worth it. That I’m worth… I don’t know. Something? Sticking around to? Suffering for? Sleepless nights? Giving up your fir- … let’s not get in to that again. You get what I mean.
I’m surrounded by brilliance and originality. What do I have to offer? What can I do to make everything better? How can I help? And I answered those questions by making myself worth the trouble. Or trying to earn the worth. If you’re not noticed, then you’re not worth wasting time over - that’s what I think. Thought. I’ve associated the two into a similar entity - attention and worthiness, that is. Isn’t that what they always do on TV? The one under the spotlight is the one who’s special? I want to be special and is that selfish? Yes. Yes it is. I won’t even say I can’t help it because I think I can. It’s hard - to let go, to share, to sink in the background without thinking that “that person got the light because that person is worth something, you’re in the background because you’re not worth anything.”
Get what I mean? I’m not trying to be selfish (although I am). I’m trying to feel like I’m worth something. I’m trying to make myself believe that. That I’m enough - that who I am, who I really am (whatever that means), is enough. Then I get these whispers from the evil one - telling me that I’m not enough to be worthy. I’m not pretty enough (I like how that’s the first one), I’m not smart enough, I’m not tall enough, I’m not talented enough, I’m not friendly enough, I don’t know enough to carry a conversation like a normal homo sapien sapiens, I haven’t read enough books to be well educated, I haven’t listened to enough seminars to be considered sophisticated, I’m not old enough to be considered mature, I’m not young enough to be considered pensive or naive, I’m not… enough. I keep doing all these things to be noticed because I derive my self worth from that. It’s stupid and idiotic, I see that now (after I spent the last few hours in an existential rut, reading on human life and philosophical journals). I’m not as smart as I think I am.
In the show that I’ve given, trying to be everybody’s enough - I failed to see one thing. I may not be enough for the entire world but I am loved. And isn’t that enough? Isn’t the fact that some two thousand years ago, He came down here to save me because He loves me enough to show me that even though I deserve it because He’s more than enough for me? No. It wasn’t. Note. “Wasn’t”. (Tenses. They matter. [Though I do get them wrong quite frequently. Just another way of being inconsistent, I guess.]) I’ve been filling myself with what’s enough for the world, for me. It only took a few gallons of water from weeping, I don’t even know how many late night phone calls (that got us both in trouble), forty something days, nearly two years of friendship for me to grasp the bare concept. It’s weird. I’m not even tempted to call you. Which is my first instinct when some grand revelation… reveals itself to my head. I just want you to know.
I see that now. I see that I’ve been, in Holden Caulfield’s terms, a phony. An actress (untrained, barely seasoned as I may be) that practices on a stage, putting on a different face, a different voice with a different story every time. In the plays that I’ve done, I’ve lost my behind the scenes. In searching for who I want to be, I’ve lost track on who I really am. The core, anyway. I know that I am supposed to help people - to make people happy. It’s just that I’ve been too keen on making myself happy that I don’t know what the difference is. I’m going to get there. It’s going to take some time (and a dose of amnesia for some people because I have no idea how I’m going to face certain people ever again because I’m still a person who is capable of shame [Also, my memory rocks.]) but I will get there.
It’s a selfless kind of selfish. I’ve been going back to John 1:5 over and over again ever since camp. It’s been in my heart for so long, surfacing at the most bizarre moments - trying to make me notice. I am darkness and I do not understand the light. I just didn’t know. Don’t. I was in the cave, my reality was the shadow.
I’m out of it. I’m dragging myself towards the light and it’s not going to be easy, putting all my sins to be seen in the light like this. Trust me, there are some gym socks in my closet that even you don’t know about (and you know almost everything, more so than me even). It’s going to take some getting used to, some adjusting to the light. It’s going to take a while. Maybe a little while. I’m seventeen years and three hundred something days old. I’ve got time. I think.
Know that I want this and I never would have understood or would have ventured away from my broken chains had it not been for your unconventional ways (with my unconventional line of thinking). I’m going to get and I’m going to be better. Count on it. And thanks for not giving up on me even when I told you to. That was really cool of you. This is an open letter with a known addressee - you know it’s for you. What you’ve given is enough - more than enough - and you can rest now, if you want to. I’ve got to do this on my own for a bit (if you want to help though, go right on ahead, if you think that would be best).
But for the yous who are not you (y’all know the “you” I’m talkin’ ‘bout), thank you for sticking by me. Thank you. I don’t know what else to say but thank you. Thank you.
If I have anything more to say, I’ll save it for another day. I know you’ll be back anyway. I’ve got a lot of backlog in my files and I should probably get to work on those. Still, I couldn’t let this go by. So before I start rambling on again, I bid you - best wishes. DFTBA.
Okay?
Okay.
P.S. I love you, too.
Day 150: How is your heart lately? (x)
Justly battered and bruised and broken and cancerous and painful.
I’m dirty and filthy and unworthy of everything I have.
I can’t even pray because I’m a phony. It’s not that He won’t listen - I know He always will - but I’m nothing. I’m a speck, I’m a liar, I’m a good for nothing, selfish little brat. I don’t deserve His love and mercy and forgiveness and blessings and all-around goodness. I just want to help people, for the people around me to be okay - to be happy. But I can’t even do that right. I just hurt people. That’s all I do and I hate it. I hate how I cause pain, I hate how I ruin other people’s lives, I hate how I’m just this giant burden that everyone has to put up with because they’re decent human beings.
I just want to make people happy and I want to protect the people I love and the people who, unfortunately, love me from the grenade that is me. I honestly want to hurt myself but I won’t because I know the people who love me will get hurt by that and I hate it and I wish they didn’t care because I don’t want to hurt them. The only pain I can allow myself is the kind that can only hurt me. I hurt by not talking about it, keeping the casualties to myself and my psyche alone. Maybe this way, I can protect the people around me and I can make them happy. Maybe I can do this one thing right.
Thing is, the explosions are targeting my heart and I’ve wanted to talk about it to at least five different people today but I kept it in. I’m not even talking about it here or anywhere else because I’m so damn ashamed of myself and everything I am. I’m a reverse bomb shelter, a nuclear reactor. All the radiation is eating me alive and I welcome it. This is what I deserve.
Disclaimer: I am physically fine. A bit of a headache due to basically lying in bed all day and refusing to move, weighed down by my own conscience. Overall, I am fine where it matters. This was written down so that when I can no longer understand my own handwriting, I still have to this to remind me why I need to hold this curse, this burden. You may read it or choose not to but know that nothing can sway my decision. I have done too much.
For reasons I will never explain (well… maybe in person), things are a little bleak for me - inwardly, I mean. I’ve been having this weird existential crisis with regard to the infinity of universes and the infinity of human consciousness since … Wednesday. That was when I had the whole “The 40th Day” revelation thing. Anyway, the 40th day did happen.
I quote from him, “You and I are… okay now.”
There you have it, folks. We’re okay. And that’s all you’re directly getting. We’re probably never going to be the same kind of people, in the same dynamic ever again but… we’re okay. And I have to say this: I am the villain in this story and I would like to publicly apologize for my actions and slandering against someone who has only ever wanted to help me, who never really needed me and could have stepped out of this sitcom drama at any time but didn’t because he knew how much I needed him. Even when I didn’t. And I’m sorry. And I’m not even going to tell you people what he said about y’all.
But that okay-ness between us has not changed my little existential crisis. In fact, it added to it. Dramatically. It’s not about him. It’s not something he said. It’s something I did. It’s something I am. This is about me which is the whole point of this blog anyway. Me. Everything I choose to show, anyway.
So. I’ve been in a mipie-like state for a bit. Not in the “people have to physically restrain me from myself” kind of state. I’m just in a very self-loathing, self-deprecating, self-pitying state and it’s not pretty. I’m just filled with this remorse and guilt and regret and overall, for the lack of a better term, sadness because of myself and everything that is indubitably and perennially wrong with me.
As therapy, I took out the 3 mini DV tapes of the night I shot the film that was the cause of all this - my compromising - and I took out my favourite shoes. I lied again, bucko. I didn’t burn them. But this was much more rewarding (and eco-friendly).
After about twenty minutes of swearing and stomping and hitting and weeping and screaming remorse and bloody murder, and exploding pieces of mini DV tapes at my work space…
There are no known copies of the detestable videos on those tapes. I’ve deleted every copy known to mankind. Now the only people who know of the videos on those tapes are us and maybe someday, we’ll forget they ever happened. And when we do forget or if we forget (which we probably never will)… we can pretend it never happened and we’d be us again.
Only it never will be again. No matter how hard I try to destroy and repent for my mistakes, we’re never going to be the same again. As I pulled on those tapes, I realized that I was holding you in them. The residue of your kisses are still on my fingertips and I’ve thrown them all away. Maybe one day we’ll forget but we probably never will.
What we were is just another thing I’ve destroyed and I’m sorry.
I hate you.
You ruined my life.
You’ve turned me into someone I hate, someone I refuse to be, time and time and time again. And why is that? It makes me more interesting. It makes me into someone I wish I was. It makes me feel like I’m good enough. I believed that if maybe somehow, someway, I could make my lies into truths. If everyone believed the lie, it would be the truth.
I hate you.
Look at what you’ve done to me.
In truth, you are me. You are the me that I can’t let go of. You are the sin that I cling on to because it’s so damn easy. It’s so damn easy to slip away from what’s hard, from what’s troubling, from what’s real. It’s so easy to pretend your dreams and your reality are one.
I hate you.
And I know what I say when I say that.
I don’t want you anymore. I don’t want you to be easy but you are, you really, really are. I’m good at you - I’m amazing at you.
Why is it so hard to tell the truth? I damn well know what it’s like to be persecuted because of a single lie that I told all those years ago.
Stop it. Just stop it.
I swear, this is the most frightening and ridiculously and endlessly amusing thing that has happened all summer.
The Number 40 has taken over my life. Or my day, at least. This is a journal entry, not a pretentious prose piece (ALLITERATION!).
Back story: I’ve been working on a piece with the working title of “The First Forty Days” for a little over two weeks now. It’s still in development and I’m still trying to figure out what form to write it in but I’m definitely working on it. It has to do with dreams and expectations and, my personal favourite, an ending that you should have expected but didn’t. The story revolves around a single day, the 40th day as a matter of fact, of two people. Okay? Okay.
Last night, I received a very interesting and ominous next from you know who at 11:29PM (11 + 29 = 40). It said:
“You and I need to talk.
Soon…”
Yes. You can practically taste the tension. I replied, of course, and agreed. Today, we arranged the “very essential” (now it’s “highly essential”, would you look at that!) conversation to this Friday, 25 May. Today, 23 May, marks the 38th day since 15 April 2012 which is, as you all know, the fall of gravity. This Friday, 25 May, would mark the 40th day. My story, “The First Forty Days”, that I started writing a few weeks ago, was inspired and is about everything that has happened to me in the past 38 days and will probably be solved on the 40th day.
I was free writing about the path to brilliance and existentialism when I realized this happened. I was simultaneously texting my friend, Arsenio, while I was writing and it just occurred to me on what had just transpired. I had predicted the 40th day it seems, or I’d like to think that I did. I was at Starbucks, by myself, with wads of scratch paper used for free writing, and I had a psychotic episode for 11 minutes and 45 seconds. I called Arsenio and basically shouted at him while I had my mental episode of me freaking out because a number had taken over my life.
I was even randomly thinking of notebooks and then told him that I bought a notebook for PHP139 (1 + 39 = 40). Today is also 23/05/12 (23 + 05 + 12 = 40). I also called Arsenio at exactly, according to my watch anyway, 4:40PM. I freaked out about the whole “I am psychic! I foretold us meeting on the 40th day! THIS IS FREAKING ME OUT! People are staring at me because I’m psychic but I don’t care because I’m psychic and they’re not!” All the while, I was also relaying my slight existential crisis of the edgeless infinite universes and how nothing in this little blimp of sky out of the universes that exist matters at all.
It was just really freaky and when I hung up the phone, my shuffle started playing “Come What May” from Moulin Rouge and guess which number it was on my shuffle. Out of the 1272 songs on my iPhone, the 40th song that plays… is that song. I left the mall at 5:00PM. I arrived home… at 5:40PM. On the dot.
I therefore conclude that I am psychic.
(I’m kidding. This is just really freaky. God, You are a funny author.)
Friday is going to be weird.
EDIT: Also, Arsenio kept telling me that it was just a coincidence while I was just like…
I have first drafts due on Thursday, articles due on the 30th, and I have to finish my requirements for my job. The school year hasn’t started yet but the workload has poured forth and I am greeting it proactively! In fact, I even have the time to write fanfiction and stuff. So ha!
In an obligatory update, I have come to the conclusion that the situation of the fall of gravity will never stop hurting. It won’t. Therefore, I’m putting myself in a different situation which will lead me to a new situation and sooner or later, it will just be another story that I passed through and each passing will hurt and I will not hurt anymore, only if I don’t cross that path again.
Anyway. I’ve been working on this piece and I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to scrap a certain part of it out and that makes me very sad since I really want to use it. I have two pieces in the works, actually. Very short ones, nothing elaborate like A Cyclical Destruction or anything. Here’s the bit of it that might not make it. I hope you enjoy it!
Maybe I’ll be a famous chef one day and the fact that I’ve never had pie at seventeen years old would be a funny story to tell the biographers who are anxiously awaiting my last words. Maybe I’ll learn how to make decent scrambled eggs and know the importance of folding once and for all. Maybe someday I’ll eat and eat and eat and the metabolism thing doesn’t kick in and I gain two hundred pounds in a year and become the woman my aunts warned me I would be if I ate as much. Maybe I’ll actually care because at this point in time, I don’t. Maybe I’ll be able to go to Starbucks or McDonalds or Yellow Cab and order my usual orders and not control the urge to weep because all I can think about is you.
Who knows, maybe I won’t leave my country and just fly around the world until the day I die and become someone no one knows, just remembers. Maybe school textbooks won’t look so evil to me anymore because I’ll be in them somehow because I did something so great or so sucky that I have merited the honour of being in a school textbook. Which isn’t that great an accomplishment because textbooks, just like morning jogs, are evil.
Maybe I’ll like Twilight again and think that the story actually makes sense and that Bella Swan is a proper characterization of a 21st century teenager. Perhaps I’ll become a professor of quantum physics and mathematics and all of my students would love me because I would look like I knew what I was talking about but in reality, I was explaining the statistical probability of owning a unicorn at age 8 while living in Downtown Alabama. Maybe one day I’ll actually know what Downtown Alabama is like because at this point in time, I’ve never been on a plane and I don’t even know if Downtown Alabama is an actual place. Maybe I’ll get my hands cut off and I’ll never hold a pen again and I wouldn’t know how to do anything and I realize how dependent I am on my hands, on these ten fingers, and how I’m grateful for them.
Maybe someday I’ll believe that what I say can actually affect the way people think. I’ll have that on my shoulders - the fact that my words, my soul, have somehow managed to reach people and actually stick to them for the rest of their life. Or for as long as it appears as their status on Facebook or if it’s less than a 140 characters, Twitter. Maybe I’ll believe that what I say actually matters and that I actually am intelligent, just not as intelligent as I think I am (which is pretty intelligent, considering my arrogance). Maybe one day I’ll convince myself that I am beautiful and that there is someone out there for me who wants to be with me every single day for the rest of his life. Maybe there will come a point in time when I look in the mirror and not wish I was someone else. Maybe I’ll see that maybe you really did or could have possibly loved me. Maybe someday, a day light years away, I’ll be able to say, truthfully, that I have moved on from you. Or maybe someday we’ll be okay again and I wouldn’t have to weep myself to sleep and think about how much I miss you.
But today’s just not that day.
You’re sitting in front of a screen, that much is inevitable. What else can you do while you’re inside your house? Heavens forbid that you actually do your chores or bake a cake or learn how to make scrambled eggs or take a three hour shower. And don’t even think about getting out of the house to catch that new Burton movie or get yourself a Burger King meal instead of ordering something in. No. You are in front of a screen and while you’re flipping through channels and see that Peter Pan is on or you’re scrolling through Tumblr and you’ve just been given the entire plot of the next episode of Game of Thrones in .gif form, there is one thought in your mind that is going on and on and on:
I miss him.
(Or her. Pronouns are interchangeable given your situation but for me let’s go with “him”.)
Here’s one thing. You shouldn’t look through your old journals and photographs and have, for some reason, every memory come creeping back in. Where you first met, the first thing he ever said to you, every single bus ride you shared and you talked about Britt Robertson in that one show he liked (but then it got cancelled after two seasons)? Don’t think about it. You probably shouldn’t have kept those bus tickets that you’re only supposed to keep because sometimes, inspectors come on board to see if you’ve paid the fare. But you kept them in your pocket or your purse or your wallet and somehow, you still have them and you remember each one of those tickets and where you were sitting, and the graffiti written on the chair in front of you.
Don’t even dream about going outside because the outside are the “us” places. Remember that one corner you used to sit on at McDonalds? Remember those couches at Starbucks you two sat on until (literally) 1 in the morning while he was on your laptop and you read a book? Remember the times you spent at that place that sold chicken and he told you that you were pretty? Remember that one time you threatened him with the worst imaginable punishment you could muster and you almost did? You could have done it, you know. Remember his house where he so carelessly placed an expensive solar-powered watch outside and you were inside his house and you couldn’t figure out if it was considered three floors because there were two staircases (but does it really count if one floor only had a giant television and a sofa)? Remember the porcelain ducks near the other staircase that had the mint sweets that he never left home without? Remember how in every fight, he would corner you to another place where he’d build a memory, and that fight would become a story and then you’d be alright again? Don’t. Don’t even dream of it.
It wouldn’t be advisable to lay in bed all day. It would make no difference that you stayed in bed until 3PM and you have a massive headache and your back hurts. The house is empty since your dad and your older sister are at work, your mom’s at the gym, and the housekeeper doesn’t really count because you don’t talk to each other anyway. You’re alone and you could be doing a number of unimaginable things but the one thing you shouldn’t do is lay in bed all day and surround yourself with a multitude, a fortress, of pillows; trying to recreate his warmth, his softness, his security - trying to feel what it was like again. The pillows provide all the softness in the world but none of them have the heat and the strong stable heartbeat that was all you needed to bring you back home. Inside your pillow fortress, you try and think of that tone and all those things he said that you probably shouldn’t remember. You think he said that he loved you but then again, you weren’t supposed to remember. You shouldn’t curl up on your side and try and think about how he smelled like nature, rice balls, fried chicken, and boy. You shouldn’t do that.
It helps not to jump every single time your phone vibrates or it rings because someone is calling you. Someone who is not him and you really ought to stop thinking that it is. You see a little red dot with a number one on it and you think you’re going to explode because you’re thinking “O, God. This is it, this is it, this is it.” But it’s not. It’s another group message from things you really don’t care about. It’s not and it’s never going to be and thinking that it is, would be counterproductive to this whole guide.
And maybe, hopefully, someday you can go outside and not be afraid that you’re going to see him (and you’re not going to roll your eyes at his dorky mohawk for the umpteenth time). The time will come when your phone vibrates and you’ll get annoyed, not anxious. And your “us” places will always be your “us” places because there were once upon a many times that you spent there and the past cannot be erased. You can only move on from it. And try and remember and recreate as you will but someday, you’ll stop missing these things, those moments, that person. They’ll exist and they’ll be in your memory but they’ll just be stories. And you become the person who was once affected by them because they were yours. And then you’ll really move on from it.
You’ll know this guide will have worked when the dull aching of the missing has stopped and you wake up at a decent hour and you go outside and make new “you” places and be okay. Because you’re going to be.
Results may vary.
- I don’t believe in the existence of writer’s block.
- There is always something in your mind. There is always something happening to you. You always feel something worth writing about.
- You have no excuse.
- But as for me, I haven’t been able to write anything for weeks.
- I write. My pen meets paper and I scrawl, and scrawl, and scrawl.
- But nothing jumps out at me.
- None of my words have the heat of my blood.
- I can’t feel them as I used to.
- And there is a block in me, I know it.
- Because it’s one thing to write.
- And another thing to write decently.
- I put my pen on to paper, I set myself to write something down.
- I’ve been writing all my life. My words are my soul incarnate.
- And now I just can’t because there’s this block.
- I keep writing about the same things, using the same words in the same way over and over and over again.
- And one phrase dominates them all:
- I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.
- I won’t even say I wish I could take it back because wishes won’t make anything better. It would amplify the pain of the past and there’s nothing we can do about the suffering we have to go through because of the choices we made.
- But I realize that not all of this is my fault. I’m not solely at fault here and I have just as much right to be upset as you are.
- We’re just at different sides of the scale, my friend, and my loss outweighs you.
- And this terrible guilt has made me morose that it has paralyzed my brain, rendering it unable to do much else but think of one thing.
- You.
- Because I’m sorry and I’ve tried to fix this.
- And now I don’t know what else to do.
- I’ve been told that what I should do to get over this paralyzing sadness, this annoying constant self-inflicted heartbreak, is to write about it because that’s what I do best.
- But when all I can think about, write about, bleed about is that same sadness - it’s a little counterproductive on both ends.
- My dirty page is blank and my heart is heavy.
- And no matter what I do, I’m still sorry.
I can think of a million other things I should be doing right now.
Maybe not a million. Maybe a hundred or fifty or a dozen.
It doesn’t matter right now because I’m not doing any of it. I should be reading my unread books. I should be working on my job. I should be working on my first drafts because they’re due in ten days. I should be writing chapters of a certain thing (or multiple things). I should have eaten dinner today. I should go to sleep at a decent hour today because I have to go to school tomorrow.
Everything’s fine. I’m not hurt or in pain or any of that. God took that all away - all of the bitterness, my unforgiving heart, the anger, all of it. Everything in my life is relatively fine. Well… maybe not everything. When my entire world was collapsing and my knees were shaking from all the burden, we were okay and I could handle anything the world could throw at me. Now everything is okay except us and… I can’t.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t know how many days it’s been because I do. Not that I’ve been counting, it’s just that I’m better at math than some people might give me credit for. And I have a remarkable memory when it comes to dates. And the worst part is I can’t do anything about it because I don’t want to make it worse than it already is. If I do something about it, I have everything to lose or everything to gain and I don’t even want to think of the latter becoming a possibility. I hate not doing anything but inaction is the only thing I can do that will have no repercussions.
And I hate how I know this is all my fault and I’ve done everything I can to fix but it’s not enough. Hope that things will get better eventually is the one thing I have in this but who knew hoping could be so sad and lonely.
I’ve never written a testimony before. I’m a writer. I’ve written a lot of things in my life. It’s what I do.
For seventeen - nearly eighteen - years of my life, I’ve also been a lot of things. I’ve been a liar - a really good one. I’ve been a hypocrite. I’ve been sex crazed. I’ve been a thief. I’ve been a cheat. I’ve been disrespectful. I’ve been proud. I’ve been unforgiving. I’ve been a megalomaniac. I’ve been an idolater.
There are probably hundreds upon thousands of sins that I’ve done and am bound to do. I’m a sinner. I’m imperfect. And I realize that and for so long, I’ve been trying to be this perfect little girl on the outside. I’d like to think that people view me as a nice girl. There was a girl once who told me she thought I was perfect - needless to say in my head I was like, “I know, right?” Sad thing was… I meant it at the time.
For most of my life, I’ve been looking for acceptance. It’s the one thing that defined me for most of my life. I always just wanted to be good enough. I could sing but I wasn’t good enough. I could write but I wasn’t good enough. I’m wasn’t a good enough daughter, I wasn’t a good enough friend. For so long, that’s what I’ve been focusing on. Pleasing everyone else but the One who wanted to be with me for all the things I’m not. I held on to people, to the world’s standards to be with me and I couldn’t stand it when they left me. I clung to them, to it, for dear life. And it was eating me inside because I was never going to be good enough for the world. The world is always going to find ways to tell me what’s wrong with me. People are always going to let me down, just as I’m going to let them down without wanting to.
I had a friend once who told me that I’m worth more than I believe I’m worth. And that was because he knew that I believed myself to be worthless. And he only told me that because he knew that Someone had died for me. My Father in Heaven, who created me in His perfect image, came down to Earth so that when I die from this temporary shell, I could be with Him for all time. I used to disregard that completely because I knew the world hated me, how could some mighty, all powerful God possibly love me? I’m a nobody. A permanent not-good-enough girl. Not smart enough, not talented enough, not friendly enough, not pretty enough, not rich enough, et cetera.
That has created a hole inside me that I’ve been filling up with the things that I could be but not the things that I am. I’ve been filling up my days with work and certain people that I’ve made important into my life and generally… I’ve been avoiding Him. I’ve been telling Him to buzz off and leave me alone because I thought I could handle things on my own when I couldn’t. The burden of the world fell on my shoulders because that’s what I was trying to please. I was trying please two masters - trying to be a good Christian girl while also being a girl who was born of the world. I know now that I cannot. There, truly, can only be one.
No matter what kind of good I do, the world cannot seem to let me forget the bad that I’ve done. When I go and confess to Him how sorry I am, He wipes my sins away as if they never happened. When I apologize to the world, the world tells me that I’m only going to do it again so there’s no point forgiving me. I had been seeking the wrong thing for so long and little did I know that it would hurt so much. I never fully understood the gravity of what He did for me, for all of us, until He spoke to me and for once, I actually listened.
He was scorned and beaten and laughed at by the entire world - by the very people He was saving, the people He loved and loves. In the blink of an eye, He could have just gone back to Heaven and watched us suffer by our own hands. He could have done that. But instead, He took the cross and died to be the Lamb for my sins and all the sins of the world. The world will always leave you but the One who loves you never has and never will. And yet, who did I prize more? Who was my audience? Who were my friends? Who was my best friend?
I served false gods in the form of work and friendship. I valued company that compromised my beliefs just because I finally had friends for once but little by little, they started influencing me and I just didn’t want that anymore so I left them long ago. I had a friend who I valued more than my own life before I knew how much my own life had cost and for what now? Unnecessary pain. I tried to please everyone and I tried to serve everyone but I know now that I cannot. I will not. My audience is not the world - it is only the Lord who judges me.
I’ve got to say, it feels amazing. It feels amazing to know that I’m loved like that. That to Someone so majestic and great and perfect and awesome and amazing - for a King of all Kings, the Maker of all the Universe - to know that He of all people loves and rescued a slimy wretch like me? It feels divine. And it’s wonderful and I can only pray that you, dear reader, listen to Him in your heart because He wants to be with you too. He’s knocking at your door, waiting for the day that you let Him inside.
For seventeen - nearly eighteen - years of my life, I’ve been a lot of things. But none of that defines who I am anymore. I am forgiven. I am saved. I am His and His alone.
To God be all the Glory.
xx, Jonnah.
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