secretinashoebox

[secretinashoebox]

isolation

Steinbeck said that the American poor don’t see themselves as poor, but rather as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Aristotle said that a man who can live in complete isolation is a beast, or else a god. I wonder if the all the people in the world who fantasize about isolation and solitude see themselves as temporarily embarrassed gods, rather than normal people with repressed beast-like thoughts.

[secretinashoebox]

okie dokie! happy national coffee day y'all! i got a free coffee from dunkin and it tasted like water so then i went to a local coffee shop and got a cappuccino and it tasted like coffee and milk, which was delightful.

i think i'm very self involved. not that this is unique to me, i think most american teenagers are very self involved. i want to be perceived as intelligent, profound, special, down to earth, talented, pretty, sexy. i want to be perfect. i've been constantly, furiously journaling since the beginning of this summer, and some refrains show up in my journals again and again. one of these refrains: "i don't want to be sick anymore, i just want to be tired. i don't want to be in love anymore, i just want to be admired." i think that part of my reasons for writing that is seeking a form of revenge on people who have hurt me, situations that have made me sick. it's pathetic, it gives high functioning depression. and it's cowardly, not wanting to be in love. but i keep coming back to that idea. i guess i want the world to see that it has hurt me, i want certain people to tie themselves in knots over the things that they've done to me, but that is never, ever going to happen. and if it did, i wouldn't know about it.

the world doesn't care about the nuances of my experiences, not really. it's impossible to calculate how i'm going to be perceived. and honestly, it is none of my business how i'm perceived. what i look like is none of my business. and if i am living in good faith, living bravely, sincerely, and genuinely, then it isn't my business if people i'm not in close relationships with think that i'm annoying. it's not my business how good my art is. it's not my business whether or not i have the potential to be a significant voice.

the best thing that i can do with my life, i think, is to give, to live outside of my head. sometimes it feels like my internal world is more complex than my external world, but i don't think that's the truth. i think that the world is dense and absurd and incredibly interconnected.

"to understand is, above all, to unify." -camus. this also connects to hegelian theory. i have only just started reading hegelian theory. :)

our world is so atomized. it can be easy to believe that the self is the most important and vibrant thing. i feel like that a lot when i fall into pits of depression. i feel like the bad appears so much more interesting than the good when it's fictionalized, and the internet has made everyone live in an increasingly fictionalized version of existence.

but somehow i have faith that the dense and absurd world will yet again prove to me that real goodness is endlessly interesting and exhilarating and healing, and real evil is fucking boring. the good is born out of abundance, the evil out of absensce.

and i'll also fall in love again.

love is only as real as god. you have to have faith in it if you want to experience the full beauty of it. okay the first sentence of this is giving incomprehensible philosopher, like lacan vibes. the second sentence is giving just girly thoughts 2014 christian girl autumn. i am not mad at that. i like this quote that i came up with. i think i can workshop it to make it more compelling. it's none of my business how good this is, at this point in my life.

i am literally just a teenage girl!

also y'all rayne fisher-quann is my favorite influencer, and she influenced me to buy herbal cigarettes. i am studying acting with the intent of pursuing it professionally, and tbh i am worried about how smoking will effect my singing voice. but maybe i'll just cope or change my major because i got such a rush when i got the email that my honeyrose cherrys came in the mail, like it made me feel alive. breathing smoke seems like an effective way to battle my seasonal depression.

oh my god i wrote a horrible poem about fire and metaphorical fire keeping me warm through my seasonal depression back in early december of last year when i was suicidal and hopelessly infatuated with the guy i was sleeping with. he did not love or like me back, the absolute scoundrel. so glad that poem will never see the light of day.

i think nicotine free cigarettes will be a lot less harmful to my body then sleeping with a man who doesn't love me back. cigarettes>situationships. byeeeee this is gonna be so embarrassing later i can feel it.

[secretinashoebox]

adolescence in the pre-apocalypse

I keep calm and carry on

Singing my I want song

I don’t want to be sick anymore, just tired. I don’t want to be loved anymore, just admired.

I don’t want to hurt or stay up sad at night.

I want to be healthy, I need to be right.

I’m young.

What I want is wrong.

The sky’s a soft blended blue

The leaves, a deep bright green

Books I bought but never read

Classic films I’ve never seen

A letter from the 1960s 

that a lover never sent

Initials carved into trees

Scars show how days were spent

Romance is an illusion

Love is immortal

The heart of beauty is inhuman

I found it on a walk up a short hill

My adolescence, spent on the pre-apocalypse

The world will end on the solar eclipse

New moon, chemtrails, spaceships

Water from a fountain on my fingertips

It all boils down to breath

My feet on the floor

I can’t indulge in these thoughts about death

What else could I do but more?

[secretinashoebox]

life in the pre apocalypse

The world is going to end. i wish i had a few more good friends.

what do I want? i see artists being adored, adored, for the work they create, but the adoration received by an audience is very different from interpersonal intimacy. This summer, I wrote a song and performed it for the camp I worked at, and it was good, and I saw that it brought everyone at the camp closer to each other. But somehow, not closer to me. I feel like that's kind of part of the work of an artist. Feeling inspired by someone, something, some situation, but making yourself take some degree of separation from it to be able to write about it and create from it.

Not being thanked is part of the work. Being separate from the others, being up on the stage, being alone, is all part of the work.

Jaques Lacan has a concept about "the real." The real is a void, nothingness. You only can see it when the things you love in the world come crashing down, and you can never see it fully, but it is always there. That concept reminds me of part of this Charles Bukowski poem called The Final Drive. I don't remember how the lines are divided or where all the punctuation is. But the words are:

"It seems like things just don't work out most of the time, and if they do it will be for a short time only. Well, that's not news. Nothing's news. It's the same thing over again in disguise. Only one thing comes without a disguise, and you only see it once, or maybe never. Like getting hit by a freight train."

Real. resonant. Real. Reminds me of when two lovers reveal themselves to actually be strangers. We're all strangers, really. In the real, we're all strangers. We're all strangers.

[secretinashoebox]

nothing gold can stay

nothing gold can stay

you've shown me that's okay

because you're you. you're evergreen

a classic movie I can say I've seen.

[secretinashoebox]

update

nobody is going to see this unless i get famous later and my stalker fans find this somehow. but. post-summer update.

i had a whole gay awakening. it was great. it kind of made me want to cry and throw up and off myself but in a good way. it was honestly just a quiet little crush but it was on a girl who was my friend. and it was the first time i'd ever had a crush on a girl and called it a crush. it was fun.

i felt so juvenile for the gay awakening thing though, because i am nineteen and most people go through this when they're like, way way younger.

i feel like my parents are disappointed in me.

i filled out like, three journals in two months. with bad poetry. and i've been writing a lot of songs. omg what if i posted my demos. lol what a trip that would be. for fun maybe. hahahahahaha.

i've started playing a lot of guitar and i am slowly getting better at it. i have callouses on my fingers and shit now. but i still can't play bar chords.

i am so silly.

[secretinashoebox]

nature's first green

i loved you like i've never loved anyone before

and you turned so mean

now i know that nothing gold can stay

because you turned my gold to green.

[secretinashoebox]

please be good

don't let me be misunderstood.

I have this idea that I can just lock myself up in a dirty dorm room with coffee and edibles and the internet, and then one day i’ll have read enough philosophy and watched enough illegally streamed arthouse movies and youtube video essays and listened to enough concept albums and played enough horror  video games and crocheted enough little projects and i’ll emerge and i’ll be GOOD. but that’s not how it works. I should bash myself over the head withthe pdf of les miderables I’m reading, if that’s even physically possible. I should knock on my neighbors door and tell her that i’ll always be there for her. I should respond to texts and sit in a common room and go out and get the shit beat our of myself. I am way more likely to stumble upon goodness through my interactions with others than I am by reading and listening and watching and typing out little tumblr blurbs that nobody will ever read.

[secretinashoebox]

it's me, hi, i'm the problem it's me.

I've recently subscribed to Rayne Fisher-Quan (internet princess)'s substack, and she proposed a question about how to deal with shame. I personally feel like shame has followed me everywhere I go. It's nearly impossible to move without feeling embarrassed, remembering something I've done wrong in the past, times i've been insensitive and inconsiderate, times i've been just plain mean.

There are infinite unproductive ways to deal with shame. Ignoring wrongdoing, painting oneself as a victim or a tortured damaged soul. Like when people say "there's something seriously wrong with me" before dumping their partner with no real explanation. Imagining or looking for things that other people have done that are worse, punishing those people.

For me, I know I hurt my ex friends in september. and i handled the ending of it badly in early october (single digit days only.) I am trying to move on from it, spend my energy becoming a better person, a person capable of being a better friend, but it feels hard to let it all go. Do I need to hear them forgive me? I don't know, that wouldn't change the material circumstances that I'm under. Do I need to distract myself again, like I did by falling in love with an emotionally unavailable man back in November and December? That leaves the same shame when all is said and done.

I wish there was a place for people to admit that they're imperfect, and work on changing themselves positively, admitting that they've hurt people and fucked up, and working to become the kind of person who does that less.

I guess church can serve that purpose, but there's like, a lot of baggage with religion honestly. Maybe community service? Hedonism? Sexual promiscuity?

maybe i'll hit up that other boy who had a crush on me last semester and tell him about my favorite video essayists. maybe i'll buy an edible from my new friend as an excuse to come to her dorm and hang out with her. maybe i'll yell at the boy who broke my heart, so he can work on his own self improvement too.

maybe i'll change the world by creating a space in which people can feel comfortable changing and admitting their imperfections. i know i'm never alone whenever i have these silly thoughts.

[secretinashoebox]

listening to the sounds of the little building

i miss when that 6'6 lighthouse of a man would show up at my door at midnight, smelling like cheap mexican food and weed, and grinning like a child.

when he'd hold me tightly, almost making it hard for me to breathe, but i inhaled and exhaled smaller breaths because i wanted to be closer to him.

and no, he isn't nice to me anymore. he's mean now. i miss when he was nice to me, when he liked me and kind of obsessed over me and was kind of pathetic. when he told me not to look at him, when he laughed at everything i said, when he made me feel welcomed and safe and known and loved.

i miss how he made me feel three months ago. i don't miss him, the person he is, all the good and bad and everything. so i guess i don't love him, after all. i miss that moment, though. i really miss it.

[secretinashoebox]

i got manic pixie dream girl'd by a tiktok microcelebrity i met in an acting class.

[secretinashoebox]

And here it all is. (from my notes app)

The clock strikes 11 pm, and i’m aching and longing and pining for a man who told me “I love you” almost a month ago. Why would he say “I love you” if he didn’t want me to fall in love with him. Why would he sleep next to me, tell me he didn’t want to see other people, et cetera, if he didn’t want me to love him too?

I know that when I wake up, and when the sun rises, I will no longer ache for him. The world is beautiful when the sun is out, and I look beautiful when I get ready in the morning. I am enough in the morning.

But the nights, oh the nights.

[secretinashoebox]

love

I'm not afraid of heights but I'm afraid of falling.

[secretinashoebox]

OH MY GOD

I always wanted to have a romantic moment. and last night was the most romantic moment of my life. it hardly feels real, it feels like a dream.

I feel I'm starting to fall for someone, and I've never been more terrified. I thought falling would be all beautiful, I thought it would be easier. I thought I would want to see him, I thought I would be brave and excited, I thought it would come naturally.

But no, I'm scared. his face makes me afraid, the thought of him seeing my face is wholly terrifying. I had kissed 11 people before I kissed him, and I had never been more afraid. not even with my first kiss.

it's just so scary. I guess I'm a coward. but he is too. he's also afraid to face me, to look at me. but we really like each other. falling in love is terrifying. but I'm gonna follow through. I will. it's what people do. time to have a human experience.

[secretinashoebox]

i can’t decide if i want to talk about him constantly so i manifest him or if i never say his name aloud so i don’t jinx it.

[secretinashoebox]

Nightmares

I've recently been having nightmares about getting pregnant and then becoming a neglectful and incompetent mother.

Fuck my life.

[secretinashoebox]

loneliness: an old friend

Loneliness feels like an old friend. there's comfort in it. It's not as comfortable as family, but god, it feels like an old friend. A way to reconnect with significant aspects of myself and my mind.

There's this saying that who you are in 10 or 20 years is the people you meet and the books you read. Lonliness takes away some of the people, and makes me rely on books more. Loneliness gives me back my Saturday and Sunday mornings.

Loneliness reintroduces me to movies and books from my childhood. I reconnect with old stories and characters, and see them in a new way. I idolize the angsty teen characters when I'm younger than them, then get a crush on them, fall in love with them, then I just relate to them as I become their age. Then I grow to be older than they are, and I want to protect them. I see their flaws and forgive them. I realize, fuck, I've grown up. I don't idolize or even thoroughly relate to these old characters, these old pieces of media, that feel like closer and older friends than almost everyone from the towns I grew up in.

So, I embrace lonliness. I don't seek it out, of course. I'd rather not be lonely. But like, I need to think that it has a point, I have to grow through it, have proof that I've grown. Have proof that I can change and my situation can change again. And if I lose everything again, I'll have my old friends in movies and books, and my even older friend: lonliness.