ferriswrites

[ferriswrites]

Remembering

tw: grief/death/vent/trauma/dissociative amnesia

Yet another November has passed. It’s almost a new year and yet this time, I do not shudder at the taste. But there is the slightest flinch at the prospect of time passing. It is far too familiar and all too known; this fury at that which is not in my control. It isn’t for me nor any other human to. Is time itself a mere perception we manipulate?

Another November is gone. I’m staring at the page of a paper white and thin.. rippled. If that paper were a metaphor for a memory I cannot see through. It is muddled in murky wet, swamped out waters and I do not know why wading through it feels natural. I can slightly recall the days to have been certain times.. yet the fogginess is a blessing and curse. It doesn’t haunt me all the same but.. still sits.

This month is one I like for the falling of leaves and crawling of crisp air into winter; a familiar beat of caroled hums. I don’t even celebrate such a holiday but I will admit the cheer of a pumpkin or apple spice, pies, and hot coco warm me as festive jazz dances over the radio. It channels in me a nostalgia and comfort deep.

I was slightly horrified earlier this year. It felt so simple; expecting that family would remember dates of important and traumatic events… I did not dare approach upon the truth when I learned my father did not. I would not crush his heart and honestly… felt relieved to get away from having to grieve. The pain of a grandparent losing their partner.. hearing that cry for the first time would not be my last and ever since it has shaken my soul entirely.

[ferriswrites]

TW: toxic relations

Toxic people consume me. And yet, when I consume what we shared, it too turns toxic.

Why can’t I stop seeing red on everything they touched? Everything I allowed them to see in hopes of “compromise” or difference?

I think what’s really the hardest is knowing I envy the me that hoped because they were unaware of this consequential crushing despair.

[ferriswrites]

“You aren’t what scares me… it’s your kindness.”

He whispers it quietly, “I’m so good at breaking things. At being broken. That I don’t know anything else and.. that terrifies me.”

[ferriswrites]

Guilt

[ferriswrites]

I feel like a plot device in my own story.

Sometimes, I hate how it gets me from one point to the next; brings me not a distance—but a displacement.

It feels so incredibly attuned to my soul.. that the ground beneath my feet is as real as my body is relative to the stars.

(Picture from “My Love is Sick” by Madds Buckley)

[ferriswrites]

Iain Reid, I'm Thinking of Ending Things

[ferriswrites]

Disbelief

How is it that you find me special? Even in ways I cannot fathom myself? Worthy?

When all I feel in my wake are the voices of people who brought me down?

Enough. Of even the littlest value? When so many of before have thrown me away? I am in disbelief.. cautious to trust; and even thought it may be foolish, I still hope.

Maybe I’m just seeking the sad validation of someone I don’t even know… Yet, I can’t help the way it makes me feel. You make me feel like a person. Like.. it’s okay to be me.

So, even if simple as as sharing how you admire something of mine, know it means so much more to me.. I cherish your words.

[ferriswrites]

tw: abuse Oct. 5, 2023 I remember being on call with my friend more than a year ago- maybe just about.

For all my life, lies have spilled out of my mouth that continued to feed my guilt. But how could this lie hurt when all it does is play along? Protect me from their wrath?

Now that I am in a place where I can stand for my own words.. the guilt is not gone, but the freedom of holding my tongue in silence is far more powerful than I ever had before.

When my friend told me my words to my “family” of love were lies I refused to believe her, but the reason I felt bad, felt a pity, was because I knew deep down it was true. They made a fool out of me by cheapening the words. It became a mantra, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

‘Please say these words will make you alleviate continuing this abuse. Please calm down and be assured by sweet lies and kindness you do not deserve. You take my tongue and shove your own down my throat— claiming there is no truth to my honesty; that the way my jaw hinges and trembles at your voice is but a lie.

I pity them. I do. Because even if they taught me that love was abuse— at least I know more than them about what love is not.

[ferriswrites]

October 2, 2023

As he got closer, the babbling of the crook became intensified—overshadowing the peaceful noise of birds’ harmonies. He liked the way water felt running across his fingertips— the wave of refreshing icy water. It embraced his palm like a serenade of dips and swirls. He could still sense the birds above— pin point them if he truly focused. If he followed the noise and craned his neck to tilt his ears in their direction he could almost imagine their placement up on that tree. He wondered what textures a bird would feel. Would their clawed feet balance them tenderly upon a branch, or scrape roughly with the kind of imprint needed for a fall’s impact? These things he did not know, but he felt wonder even when curiosities may never be satiated, for it meant he’d always continue to hunger for more— reach further into the depths of his musings. He supposed most would find the morning of a swampy creek like this incredibly uncomfortable. Or at least, call it a “lovely” ambiance and then go about their day, the scene having little meaning upon their life.

He remembers those mornings of early rise. Ones where he’d track to school, nothing but a backpack set upon his shoulders. This in of itself seemed a metaphor for the feeling a youth may have—trapped in their own gravitational atmosphere; a beautiful one even so. For even if those mornings gave him hands bitten by frosty winds and shivers from the dampness of the grass, he reveled in the sensation of his brisk pace. The crunch of the frosted over grass would leave imprints behind him, a morning birds call near, and the hum of a wintery sun clouded over the sky.

The sound of Canadian geese gave him nostalgia even with their pesky habits of leaving behind fields of bird dung in their wake.  If one was smart, they’d leave behind shoes lest they be ruined by the stain. 

In his middle school photography class, he recalls photographing a bee’s wings. The zoomed in shot made the ordinary creature appear as if a fairy hung in the sky, dancing its way to pollen. It still been in the 2010’s then. It felt remarkably unsettling how in just a few years he’d gotten accustomed to the 20’s enough for the 10’s to be foreign to him. The smell of lavender encased the centerpieces of his middle school campus— the many trees that lined the pathways. This one was tall enough to provide adequate shade even if in the spring not an outstanding worry. It was still a time in the season in which spring gave a refreshed sense of freedom from the underwhelming fatigue of a winter’s contempt. He could understand clearly why any such animal may wish to hibernate— to take a rest away from the chaos of life.

However, as much as he wished to understand the feeling, he didn’t want to seek it. He had a life to live and each season gave meaning to the time he navigated it. He loved that kind of change, that is, apart from the summer in which his childhood town experienced intense dry heat. The weather there had sparked discontent and fear of fires and that fear was not unfounded. He was only ever lucky to not be one hit by more than an intense smoke some summer days. The first peculiar red moon felt like an eclipsed twilight shining itself down on to the atmosphere. It was as if he’d walked into an apocalyptic world when he woke up to it. These memories just made him feel far more appreciative of where he was now and how far he’d come. He smiles at the sun. It shines back at him, sending a breeze in greeting and the clouds just as always pass him by in their own dance. It wasn’t a song heard but it was a sight he too was entranced by. Earth just as in his youth would continue it’s twirls, spinning on it’s axis each and every day so that he could live. It was a world unlike any other, but also the only he’d ever known and that’s why it was so incredibly special. Another day. Another second. Another year. He was still here.

[ferriswrites]

I want to write something profound-bring out the very depths of my soul and define that which makes me me, but I remain staring- looking at this screen and small text while finding that little has been conjured.

I’ve been in a hole I dug for myself and I can’t help but despise the clang of the shovel each time I dig because I want to dig myself out, but I simply do not have the strength. I suppose it’s something of slow repetition and sore, tired- out but building strength. Like lifting weights. You can not lift more in the same day, otherwise it may strain you.

I’m not so down I think I’ll always be stuck here- if anything what hurts the most is having to accept the world will not accommodate for me. That now that I am this age- freedom will always come at a price. But autonomy itself is an illusion and I feel locked in many a cage that wrangles my chains with iron rings. Has it always been this way? Will it ever be? I think what’s most haunting of all is that isolation is so difficult to crawl out of because of it’s familiarity. I’ll get out. One day. And I vow I’ll leave this all behind and build myself a better life. Because if I can’t promise that to myself, I feel I have nothing. I just want, no need better.