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 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...
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.
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?
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.
"I'm hosting a dinner for my husband's work colleagues."
This is a sentence i never thought would feature in my life. Ever.
i am not this person; such a person is not me.
But adulting has brought me to my Mrs Dalloway era.
At least Mandem takes good candids while I'm losing my shit.
i am penning this post while taking a break from dusting, vacuum-cleaning and mopping my home because unlike Mrs Dalloway i do not have an army of helpers. And, i have another job apart from being the better half. That is a paying job but i digress. This is not a tirade against how overlooked the role of a house wife is.
This is a rant against the Mandem aka the husband, who constantly lands me in situations such as these because he's a nice person who cannot say no. i, on the other hand, am not.
i am fully aware that we're not a traditional married couple that start playing some sort of stereotypical, societal roles after getting hitched. i mean, we had a pretty unconventional wedding without a single guest, no bachelor party/hen do and no honeymoon either.
Why? Well, in our mind the fun doesn't end once you tie the knot, so there's no need to act like wedding is an apocalypse for fun.
So, imagine my surprise when Mandem drops this bomb on me. The guests are a couple accompanied by their child. No, they aren't getting a babysitter.
What can i possibly converse about?
A kid is a left-hook that you didn't see coming. Now, i am busy hiding my precious taxidermy art and vintage paintings, smoking paraphernalia, objectionable manga and anything NSFW. i hate it.
Socialising for the sake of socialising is so overrated. So, is networking. It's so mind-numbingly boring to try and converse with people with whom you have nothing in common.
The older i get, the more aware i am of how short life is to be wasted on moments that do not spark joy.
But i shall overcome. i mean, at the very least, i will have a story to tell at the end of it all about the time i almost died of boredom.
Back again to shout in the dark... Actually just hum contentedly to myself.
My previous posts seem to be from a lifetime ago. They make me cringe... but I guess I really felt those emotions then. The Akemi who wrote those words is a stranger BUT i admire her s̶t̶r̶u̶g̶g̶l̶e̶ delusions.
To all the boys i've loved before... i'm your villain.
i recently went through my old mails, messages and chats in an unexpected (and unintended) act of introspection. Frankly, i was expecting it all to confirm the narrative that i have always held... that i was the one who was wronged.
That i was too pure, too naive and more importantly, too much in love. However, my voyeuristic trip down memory lane stored in bits and bytes painted an entirely different picture.
My selfishness and vanity were plain to see in every sentence I've ever typed out. A lack of empathy and a morbid pleasure in playing the victim...
I must add, that some m̶e̶n̶ boys deserved that repulsive version of me. For they have grown into older versions of their perverted younger s̶e̶x̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶d̶a̶t̶o̶r̶s selves.
But one definitely did not.
I think about him often after my recent realisation. We were both kids and then young adults trying to make sense of all the vollies that life was throwing at us while desperately trying to not let go of each other.
As a much, much older Akemi, i realise that we were always supposed to let go. If i knew then what i know now, i would have done that. Then, w̶e̶ i could have avoided 13 years of wishing him the worst.
Because, he was never my villain, i was. Well, as much as a 20 year-old girl can ever be because even though hindsight is a gift, i cannot expect younger Akemi to ever understand what he was going through.
And, yet again, because hindsight is a gift, i can see we were never the happily ever after.
We were eachother's tough life lessons, the ones that stab your soul, rip your heart and leave you quite breathless with a sickening feeling in the pit of your stomach.
For this, you need to open up your heart, trust blindly and surrender your soul, because you only learn this lesson once and never again.
If only i had patience and a crystal ball, i would not have unleashed the hell that i did.
Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.
- Sylvia Plath
As i pray for our battle scars to fade away, i realise that there's nothing left for me to do but to sit with this epiphany. An apology means too little, comes too late and is probably not even required... because unlike my younger self, i realise that i am not the sun and the lives of others don't revolve around me.
i pen this realisation and send the secret up in the sky as a star so that it can twinkle at you...
