Shower thoughts of grotesque

My most recent shower-thought is that we, as humans, know so much about ourselves now that we ever did before. 

It's kinda cool because i think it allows us to carefully plan our life...but then of course, God laughs.

For instance, my period tracking app, Flo, tells me all about my symptoms in advance so that I can be mindful. Like today, I'll be able to work out harder but would have to be wary of "reward-seeking behaviour" in social settings. My astrologer tells me about my week, month and even year. This week I'm fated to be melancholic, unlucky and highly likely to fall into "bad company."

Speaking of bad company, i am actively trying to ghost a 'friend'. i have known her for over a decade but we were never really each other's inner circle, at least back home. So, i'm a little surprised when she started introducing me as her BFF in the new country. Friends and lovers are hardly perfect...you have to find the one whose imperfections align with yours.

In this case, her social-climbing and boy-crazy behaviour (recently-acquired) gives me major ick.

For long, i blamed the societal (and biological) pressure on women to find a mate as the reason behind her new persona. Now, after a deep discussion with Mandem, i am inclined to believe that that isn't entirely the case. She's always been like this, i just wasn't around much to witness it. Mandem said that he's noticed that I'm not cheerful or relaxed wherever i return from meeting her unlike my hang out sessions with my other girlfriends.

That's some astute observation since i didn't notice how i was feeling because i was busy suppressing my icks.

Oh well! Quality over quantity is a good deal any day. I'd rather have just two really good girlfriends than an Insta-aesthic girl gang. 

In any case, this friendship was bound to end, given our starkly opposite views on life.

i have never hidden the fact that i have nothing in common with people who choose to or aspire to procreate.

Just like my favourite poem mentioned in the previous post, they've chosen the path I would never want to walk.

It's neither good nor bad, it's just that this is my opinion. People should be allowed to have personal preferences if they aren't harming anyone. I simply have nothing in common with them after they volunteer to raise a child. Simply put, i don't want to be around that energy.

While my views on this issue has led me to alienate a lot of my friends and family, i truly believe it's for the greater happiness. Everyone should aspire to live what's best for them. 

Sayonara

Under water

Having lived alone for more than two decades, being married is quite an adjustment. i really don't understand how people with uncooperative spouses deal with it for all their lives. Thank the universe for Mandem (maybe i am his uncooperative spouse...)

It may sound like a non-issue but i feel like i cannot go though my mental breakdowns in solitude anymore. Earlier, weekends were when i would go though a host of repressed emotions, deal with them with my trademark cocktail of nicotine and soda, a little bit of lavender incense burning, a hot bath and face mask. 

Cheap and cheerful.

Now, when i try addressing my issues with my tried and tested rituals, the air in my home is heavy. No, its not because i smoke indoors, only heathens do that.

Its like the emotions escape from my pores and get stuck on Mandem. While it's incredibly comforting to have someone supporting me, I think it's hard for others to grasp that what I'm experiencing is just a brief period of melancholia—it's really not that big of a deal. My melancholia is my only constant. 

People should be allowed to not talk about their sadness, if they choose not to. Maybe it is a flaw in my system that i feel talking about my feelings is a sign of weakness and i find it incredibly repulsive. This thought truly only applies to me. i do not project it nor do i expect/want others to adhere to it. So, with this warped thinking, when I sense that he sees my mental breakdown and feels sorry for me, I absolutely despise it. It makes me hate myself because the one thing I cannot tolerate is anyone feeling pity for me.

Only i can pity myself. But my rules on self-pity are another story...

Don't feel sorry for yourself. Only assholes do that. 

― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

At the moment, i feel this blog is my only escape because its only me and nobody else. i have a bunch of neg thoughts swirling around in my head like a fucking milkshake. And i don't do dairy!

i am fully aware that these ideologies of mine are probably going to come back to haunt me but i shall deal with it then. This is now. 

Maybe this rage and self-control power my work...you do need a lot controlled force to pierce through cartilage and skin to create something beautiful while causing the least amount of pain. 

Sayonara.

the road not taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

i have been thinking about this poem a lot lately. Though i have loved this poem for a long time, it's only now, in the phase of life that i am in, that i perhaps understand what the author really meant.

The burden of being a Libran never felt so heavy before...

i am torn between what i am expected to do and what i want to do. 

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

i have been actively interviewing for jobs that match my perceived cerebral capabilities and perhaps more importantly, social stature. 

But the prospect of leaving behind the life that i made for myself in the past is so deliciously inviting...and frightening.

i had thrown it all away when i moved abroad but can i truly throw it all away for good? Because that would mean erasing all trace of what i was and what i could have been.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Sayonara.

she's melting houses of gold

I write best when I am either falling in love or falling apart.

- Rudy Francisco

That is broadly true...but right now, i'm languishing somewhere in between those two situations.

i played the last innings of my body piercer phase a few weeks ago. Now, it's back to the drawing board to map out the life ahead.

i'm not really worried about AI taking over the writing industry...because it's not really good writing. It's mediocre...anyone getting impressed by words spewed by a chat bot never really had good grammar writing skills to begin with. It's all so synthetic and incapable of inciting any feelings. I believe that the main problem is the shrinking attention spans of the readers. 

Anyhoo, whatever has to happen will happen. i've been on a bender since August, through most of September, and i'll probably keep it going until Halloween in October.

Getting old is not really conducive to such plans. My liver has been revolting but drinking (tea or a pint) is a non-negotiable in most social situations. 

i have three costumes planned for my favourite time of the year...kinda excited for my first slutty Halloween. In the past the focus was always on getting the details and the character right. 

This time i'll try to get my bits out...my friend told me that i dress "conservative". i think she's right...i love the prude, slightly depressive and beautifully morbid Victorian aesthetic. 

i've even started collecting Victorian mourning  and memento mori jewellery. It's incredibly romantic...

Sayonara

The Cringe of Main Character Energy

Currently in the middle of the monthly haemorrhaging ritual that nature mandated women partake in. Coming over here in the depth of my monthly monster is not a good idea but here i am... cramps, bloat and all.

As i see it, anything that gets me to string two sentences together is a good idea. 

The irony of celebrating my birth anniversary while writhing in pain is not lost on me. Well... At least i was having fun until the monthly monster arrived.

Mandem got me a bunch of birthday presents but my favourite was the 20th anniversary vinyl of Fallen by Evanescence. i had completely forgotten how obsessed i used to be with Amy Lee. i have been playing it on loop.

It felt so nice to listen to their music after aeons. i must admit the lyrics did give me a slight cringe with the whole 'edge lord' vibe. 

It is what it is...

i am not exactly embarrassed by my emo days. To be fair, all the rest of my "emo" peers have gone ahead and built fairly normcore lives for themselves with stable jobs, kids and the works. i haven't and i don't really intend to. You see, it was not exactly a phase. 

i still do enjoy melancholia and i guess, once an edgelord, always an edgelord.

The only difference is that i am not exactly public with it...running to Myspace (or even Orkut) to update my status.

In my defense, things really did feel pretty intense back then...

Maybe it was the teen angst or maybe hormones or maybe life was indeed intensely shitty.

On the other hand, life's shitty-ness factor rarely fluctuates regardless of your age.

But that phase has made me slightly more tolerant when i see videos of people on my FYP singing/staring/gyrating while looking moodily into the camera—with a skin-whitening filter, of course. 

The cringe... Oh the cringe 

Everyone is a main character in their head. In my younger days (a phrase mostly used by adults when they think they are ready for adulting) it involved listening to an Avenged Sevenfold, BMTH, SOAD and BVB playlist, wearing nervous system destroying skinny jeans, vision obstructing bangs and scribbled on Vans/Chuck Taylor.

Now, the aesthetics are different but maybe, just maybe the underlying need for attention is the same. 

Either way i am not really curious to see if their adult lives turn out to be a different shade of shitty than us former-emos (are we really?). As i said before, once an edgelord, always an edgelord. 

Sayonara

The bystander effect

I fell for my own honeytrap 

I swear I saw it coming

I wish I could take it back.

- The Bystander Effect, Secular Ghosts

i am quitting my career as an aesthetic body stabber. It does not spark joy, mostly because people are sheep and cannot see beyond helixes, traguses and second lobes. 

i am bored out of my wits doing the same ol' vanilla piercings and allaying their fears about the pain *eye roll*

In my honest opinion, living such vanilla lives is more frightening. Piercings definitely hurt way less than continuing to stay in a toxic relationship where your partner dictates whether or not you can get a 1.7mm incision in your body.

Why are you empowering men like that?

i mean, women give life to an entire human being. A 16G piercing is nothing NOTHING compared to that. i cannot bring myself to deal with women who don't realise their own strength.

Anyway, i have been feeling my usual melancholia... counting down days till i can sit at home and figure out what to do next. Maybe it's the post-COVID effect, the disinclination to deal with insincere and boring personalities.

One thing is to be said of my current workplace... it's anything but drab. 

One of my shop neighbours is an eccentric costumier whose pet peeve is that shoppers rarely enter his shop instead choosing to window shop. i think they're intimidated... couture can be so to most people. 

When he's not vociferating on this topic, he plays the most gorgeous boomer playlist. I've used a couple in this post.

Meanwhile, my boss is quite the entrepreneur with a piercing as well as dog salon business. 

Just last month my boss had a major beef with a former employee (not a piercer) who was sacked for siphoning off funds from her dog grooming shop and allegedly harassing his women colleagues.

Let's just say, nearly all shop owners in the borough were picking a side in this feud. 

Salacious rumours were peddled like candies and accusatory shouting matches were de rigueur. There were 2 spit fights (one witnessed by yours truly) and one instance of shop vandalism.

No coppers were ever called. In a moment of weakness, my boss divulged that she has an assault and shoplifting record from her wild teen years. Her fiancé does not know this. 

i am sure the other parties involved in this feud have their own secrets they would rather keep from His Majesty's lawmen.

i had parked my arse firmly on the fence until i found out that the former employee had traded a disabled badge for his car in exchange for washing and grooming a man's two dogs at a discount. He pocketed the money and the badge.

This objectionable transaction was discovered when the man demanded the return of the disabled badge from my boss, who was quite clueless about the entire transaction.

Ew.

How can i ever top an action-packed work experience like this?

Sayonara

U.O.E.N.O

i've replaced the pen with a needle. 

i cannot write because i think COVID broke my brain. 

Not the illness really but just those two years of stillness. Prior to that, i really thought i had my shit together (finally)...a job that i loved, a beautiful home (i miss so much) and the best body cuz i had been hitting the gym like an addiction.

Now...

i just can't write... i can't bring myself to write for a living anymore. It's strange and something i have never experienced before. It's no ordinary writer's block. 

Sidenote: where are the hipsters? It's like we emerged from the pandemic to find an entire subculture completely wiped out. But, i digresss...

i know that this blank page syndrome is pandemic-induced yet the lockdown remains one of the best times of my life. Could it be that i entered another dimension in my life where i am not a writer? But after relying on words for so long, i do not recognise who i am if i cannot write. 

(i am obsessed with this song, it consumes me.)

Words paid my bills, introduced me to the best of the human race, and frankly saved me from my self-saboteur teens and twenties. 

So, i am back here, forcing myself to churn out sentences, squeezing out every thought and feeling that pops into my gorgeously empty head.

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

-Sylvia Plath

i pierce bodies for a living. It was not a conscious decision...nothing in my life ever is. i started out loving it.

Different anatomies, different possibilities 

Some of my work

i thought i had found my true calling. i am not so sure anymore. 

Having never really planned anything, i am at a loss when there's no flow to go along with.

Sayonara