Lady A

"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.

Sayonara 

Some feeling

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...

i hope you're as happy as i am.

Sayonara

Forgive sounds good
Forget, i'm not sure i could
They say time heals everything...
But i'm still waiting

- Dixie Chicks, Not Ready To Make Nice

i am back again...

i wonder...and i spend endless hours thinking about this...does anyone feel the way i do?

i feel like i am capable of feeling...really feeling...only negative emotions such as hate, anger, fear, sadness. Not gluttony because i am not into food at all and food supposedly makes people happy.

It's like i was born with the feel-good receptor inside me dead. Maybe that's why i don't understand other people's happiness. i also think they are not adequately sad.

Their sadness feels not deep enough and therefore, the thing that makes them sad seems trivial too. Or maybe they are experts are hiding pain. Maybe we all are. See, but this is a common thread that joins me to them.
Other than that there is a constant state of confusion in my head. How am i supposed to behave when i don't feel?

Sometimes i really miss the days i could just cut my wrist and watch myself bleed. i really don't remember when, why and how i stopped self-destructing. i just did.

But i do miss it. 

Now, i have nothing. It's just emptiness and i really don't know how to fill it.

Today something weird happened that made me write this. A man i barely know has been texting me...that seemed like he was hitting on me. i don't know about others...but i was so repulsed. But you see, i can't trust my judgement when it comes to assessing emotions. So, i was confused.

i spoke to my only friend of sorts at workplace, showed him the texts and thankfully he agreed that they were inappropriate. He staged an intervention with the man and myself in a room. i don't think the man understood why i would feel uncomfortable...but he said he would leave me alone.

However, the point is that the whole incident left me so enraged. Why would you try get close to me when i am clearly not meant for social company?

Maybe his emotional receptor is wired incorrectly. And, he feels all the positive emotions and pick up signs when there are clearly none. Or he is an asshole.

i pick up negative vibes all the time, i can smell the sadness in a person. The man pretends to have undergone a personal tragedy but i smell no sadness on him...just weakness and worse, the penchant to use that weakness as a crutch. If that isn't repulsive, what is?

 

Sayonara  

A word whore

You know you have been going in a circle over and over again when life throws you same problems but in different packaging. 
You peel the package open and you find it is the same problem. It's just a newer version...but the same thing that you thought you had put behind you, but no, because here it is again. 

Remember when millions of years ago i had painstakingly poured out my pain through Microsoft Paint and told the tale of an ex who was bragging that i was just a fling and i quote "i am more in love with her language than her."

Here, join my 21-year-old self in the misery -Lovesongs in my head, killed us.

Anyway, same problem...different packaging. 

One of my new colleague and an old one, constantly keep hitting me up, feigning friendship and small-talk till they come around to the real deal - Hey can you write me a short intro for my interview or Can you check my script? or Can you write this or that...
 
They seem like harmless questions or just 'favours'. But i never cash the favours...and my words take them far away to happy lands of success and accolades, while i am still here languishing in a place where my work has never received a compliment in the 8 months I have spent here. 
A place where i am constantly made to feel lesser and when the day ends, i feel so small that i cannot even validate my own existence. 
i reach home in a daze, light up cigarettes after another, looking at stars and finding reasons to cry but the tears never come. 

This voice inside of me has lost its breath
It's far too tired to sing at ease
All of the things I never said out loud

They will remain inside of me

- Gert Taberner, Fallen

So, i whore my words out because even though they are stealing my thoughts...at least my words get to be in a happy place and receive kind words that i never will. 

Pornographic Ditties

No matter where i am, i find my way back to you.

Urge to purge...without speaking. How long can i manage? It's like a cancer of the soul, eating away slowly any chance of happiness- real or imagined.

Men at work are making light of my work...done after many sleepless nights. All my efforts. Just because it does not suit their ideological journalistic beliefs or may be just because they can. 

One of my teachers had told me that never be married to your work...i think i may have made that mistake. 
Their words sting...my ears are burning and my cheeks feel like they are on fire...  

i am so confused. These highly learned men, whose craft i would have respected had this not have gone down the way it did. My work does not define me...i own  nothing...my words are paid for, so why do i feel like this? 

i did not confront them. They are still talking over and around me like i don't exist. Comparing my words to porn. i did the only thing i could to not hand them the victory and cry...i wrote some more. Is it porn?
If my bursting heart is a phallus then yes, writing these words did massage it and i did climax, a tear-less, numb state of nothingness.

Hollow men, hollow lives
Big egos, conversations trite
Waiting to extinguish any spark of light    

i feel better. Let me write some more. 

Not the right shade of brown,
Not the right kind of eloquence
Not on the right side of right
The only thing right i can do is to just be

i think my black cloud has returned. The heaviness, the emptiness...and oh the guilt... so much of guilt. Because there's no reason, no explanation to why i feel the way i do.

The problem of melancholia is not just the inexplicable suffering. For me, the worst is the fear of something good happening. I'm so scared of any ray of happiness sneaking in that i let all of my chances, the shots at acing in life, just pass me by. Like a singer says 'oh sadness! I'm your girl.' i hate my job and i want to leave...i have two job interviews lined up for tomorrow too. But will i make it to them it's a big question mark. Would anyone believe that i just can't make myself do things anymore?

i am constantly thinking of ways to die... at my own hands, according to my own plan. i am not sure if i'll ever go through with it but just the thought of having an exit ready is like a warm fleece blanket and cup of hot coffee on a cold winter morning. It cocoons, shields and strengthens me... the thought that i can bring all this to an end on my own terms.
With everything going out of control, i just want to have something that's all mine... my life.

Maybe i'll get better, maybe i won't or maybe i'll see y'all on the other side. But for now... the black cloud is here to stay.

Don't

i have been having an extraordinarily bad spate of luck since September 2017 and if you don't know what happens when people are dumped with an unending series of misfortunes, let me tell you. 

When this world doesn't make sense, you turn to the other world - the unknown, the inexplicable...the void. i am no different. It all started with my dog, Jordan, getting paralysed in a freak accident and then slowly but steadily my life is withering away and i feel like i am writing my own destruction. 

Cause you're my religion
You're how I'm living
When all my friends say I should take some space
Well I can't envision, that for a minute
When I'm down on my knees, you're how I pray 
- Lana Del Rey, 'Religion'

i recently had an accident when my vehicle hit two kids on a scooter and flipped over. The driver and the vehicle were on the road, parallel to the ground and i was standing upright without a scratch. A bloody scene but a controlled chaos. At least no one was left paralyzed for life...
Just like the previous calamity, i have no recollection of how i ended where i was. i am shaken and i am scared...so very scared. But i don't know why i can't talk to anyone about it and i can't stop thinking about it either. 

There's no God was my takeaway from that night in September which has changed my life for good. Jordan isn't in depression and is his usual self most of the times. But, i can't. Just. Be. Normal. 

i can't 'Thank God' that in spite of paralysis his bladder works fine so that he doesn't need a catheter. 
i can't 'Thank God' that he has to stay away from me for the most part of the year.
i can't 'Thank God' for having great parents who have generously been babysitting him for me endlessly.
Most of all, i can't 'Thank God' for anything that stemmed out of this tragedy and that includes my high-paying but soul-sucking new job that I only took to afford his wheelchair. 

There is no God because if He/She existed, they wouldn't have put us through this while really bad people walk free. 
There's no God because no matter how many times and whichever angles I look at it from...it doesn't seem fair or right. And, if there's a God that has let this happen, I refuse to acknowledge his presence.

He isn't my God.  

Sayonara