aswirlingvortex

[aswirlingvortex]

i think i could leave if i wanted to, nothing broken, nothing made. no regrets except for everything at all. I could leave before it gets dark and difficult and hurts to breathe when I speak. I could self sabotage a situation I’ve seen before, run before it blights me with a thousand scars I’ll still be finding years from now. A brother, a friend, a companion, a lover, a colleague, a soulmate, a stranger, an end?

Can I squeeze myself into your life, the way I infiltrated, forced my way into hers? I told you I hated making friends; that was a lie. In truth, I hate the prospect of making no good friends. The crippling dread of walking into a new space, and finding no one up to par, no one worth spending my days with. No one to compare to those who filled my life before. I hate the thought of living a half full life, because I’ve tasted real friendship already. I can’t stomach the cheap stuff anymore.

I held a heavier ego yesterday; the size of which I’ve not felt in years. It’s like you awakened a part of myself I thought I’d crushed, deflated; died. I felt stupid, untested and confident like fourteen again. Projecting a self of myself I could only find in memories, I’d decided must’ve been a dream. The logical idealist, the naïve old-soul, the child in adult’s clothing.

You make me feel like Carolina’s best friend again. I was convinced she’s died. But here she is, having twenty-seven half finished conversations, bumbling through sunny days, unsure whether you know I’m here because I’ve never been so sure of anything else. Except you’re not eleven, and neither am I.

Growing up obsessed with being the original, the first. Deep down knowing it came from the fear that without that badge, I may fail to ever be notable at all. Being new and better is unpredictable, is unstable, unreliable. Being here first, they can never take that away from you. Even if you unearn the right, even if you travel so far it’s almost as if you never met, we’ll still share an original wound.

You’ve got scars already, more than me. You’ve been making your own dinner for years now. How do you make friends with people you’re a little bit in love with nowadays? You can’t just force yourself into group Geography projects. You can’t invite yourself to Chinese new year trips to London. You definitely can’t sit on your bedroom floor, and ask, hearts clutched in ipods and brick phones, ‘please love me, please please please please love me, I’ll never leave you I promise, just say you’ll never leave me, say you love me, say you’ll love me always and forevermore’.

I can’t because I know better now, at least on the last point. I didn’t love her forever more, and she did leave me, at least for a moment there. We are coming back to each other, but we know better now. The years have roughened our skin, I see now, you can’t force people to never leave. Forced instead to blindly trust, the elation, the pleasure, the joy of knowing you, it’s worth every possible awful thing you could ever do to me. The risk is exponentially growing, bigger than my teenage heart could hope to perceive. But it’s the only risk worth anything at all.

[26th May 2025 19:57]

[aswirlingvortex]

reading richard silken and realising this might just be the life I was dreaming about. The one where I get to stumble around, unsure which way to go, unsure what to say, but now I get to make all the rules. It was a blessing, treading the dictated lines. This restless, uncertain energy, that's just a life that's now my own.

And it's less than perfect. She knew deep down it would be. Still, there's something disappointing in being just as clueless at 22 as I was at 13. Except I know that's also untrue. I am a thousand times changed from my teenage self. I am wiser still, despite feeling just as stuck, inert, behind my peers. I am filled with old trauma that won't leave me. I am frustrated with myself and these self-made patterns I keep falling into. I am angry at the world, at fate, that she won't finally deal me a new hand. I am so full of yearning. When does this cup become too full?

They're a precipice I know already. They're a bad idea to take seriously, a fun time to keep around, a dangerous game to play with my fickle mind. But I've seen these signs before, I'll protect myself this time. I'll save my own skin. I'll find another guide if you leave, I'll be okay. I won't tie myself to you, like I tied myself to her, or even to him, or to any of the others. I know better now.

Does that leave me alone? Does that leave me a single self, fending for my own life? Spent forever fighting to be more than extension of another self, now I hold my own happiness in my hands, and I've never felt this responsible. I am the bearer of my own freedom, still holding herself within old confines. Because they might still come to claim what they once had? Or because there's comfort in the familiar, even if it's painful? Restrictive? Because I wanted all this freedom, and now it's here, I don't really know what I wanted to do with it all. The plans never really went this far.

The plans were hypothetical. The plans were riddled with the castings of trauma, an addiction to the sickness, an inability to envision a life not defined by some type of suffering. If I was happy, it was as someone else entirely. An enhanced version of myself I wouldn't recognise if I passed her in the street. I could entertain myself with unfathomable situations in the movies in my head.

And now I own the narrative, I'm just the scared little girl dreaming of something to save her from the monsters in her head, her house. Vocalised it to a friend before I knew it to be true; a part of me will always be scared to give myself up to a man, to love in the way I've always dreamt of loving. Maybe the trauma left an unrealistic image of romantic love. I made it up, I dreamt it up. I'm sat, desperately yearning to get to try it out. Does no one want to love me, be loved by me? Or have I brought a gun to a knife fight? Does no one know how much I wish to love? Did I get it all wrong, inside my head?

Too obsessed with being perceived; too scared of being perceived. Too at home with self-flagellation, too dependent on the sense of perfection. Too prideful and too shameful. Everyone I've ever loved has failed to love me fully. Everyone I've ever loved has consumed me into a shell of a being, until the push away, the drowner's instinct, the childhood sword. Trust me, I think I meant to die. Loving is ugly, to love and lose, is to know beautiful things can die, and hopelessness abounds.

But what is the alternative, if not hopeless?

So how to make it over the hill? Finally finding freedom only to find he's here too. Forever to love the many over the few, or to love those who love many over few. What is this inheritance? Am I reading into regular life? When will it happen to me? I want to believe I don't need it. That I'm actually content. But I'm an attention seeker, defined in company, I can't go on alone like this for very long.

What a tragedy this is. I wanted to talk to you. It's okay that you're busy. I talked to them, I think maybe I talked too much. I met so many people today. I can't be sure I made many good impressions. I can't be sure of much. They confuse me, I confuse myself. I don't understand my own actions. I am playing a dangerous game I didn't enter. I'd like to die now, please. Quick, before I do something embarrassing I can't come back from.

I want to find the words to make it all make sense. But they don't seem to come. At the paper, at the keyboard, at the keys. I couldn't write during the others either. I couldn't really make head or tail of it all until it was far behind in the rear-view mirror, and the wood from the trees all looks alike.

My brain doesn't even feel medicated. Oh god, I can't stop reliving my own words. I'm embarrassed by everything. I know the problems. I can't seem to fix them yet.

Dream, dream, I'm trying. Baby girl, I'm out here trying for you. I don't know how to do this. Can you send any help?

[aswirlingvortex]

I killed the conversation on purpose. I just couldn’t live with the thought that I was getting my hopes up, even without trying to. I couldn’t stomach the reality that everything I feared was true. That this would be one of those repeating patterns again. Where I crush myself over into the smallest possible shape, and it takes months to years to ever open up again. And everything we could be is irrevocably changed. I ruined it before it started. Or I felt myself starting to. So I just wanted to kill it off before it becomes that powerful. Just wanted to let you know. Didn’t want you to misunderstand.

Part of me still wants to inexplicably talk to you. There’s no reason why I should. I can’t explain it away. But here I am not just wanting to take the risks, but also lacking the fear that usually accompanies them. It’s silly really. Just two weeks ago, you were no one to me. Now you’re a vision I used to come down from a panic attack. You have no right to be this important to me. All you ever did was maybe suggest we get a drink. I don’t even know now what you could’ve possibly meant.

This has happened before. I would wait and wait and wait for just one more sign. Just so I wouldn’t embarrass myself unnecessarily. But eventually I’d grow impatient, waiting for something that wasn’t coming back. Forced to spend the next year grieving actions I never took, wondering where exactly I let it all fall down. And he was a good for nothing man. And some part of me will always be a little bit angry with him. But at the end of the day, he didn’t choose me. And that was his prerogative.

I don’t want to find out you didn’t mean anything. I’m already worried I ruined it a little bit. I was very cool before I wondered, wasn’t I? I’ll try to be her again. See where that takes us.

So I killed the conversation for now. Please, please restart it. I’d love to talk to you. I love to talk to you.

[aswirlingvortex]

another person I'm happier I'm getting to know better

I'll pretend you didn't touch me in a way that made me start a little, a few times now. But only because I'm so embarrassed to be wrong again. Only because I've gone mad for only a few days now, and it's already unbearable. It's already left me vacant and void when you're not here, even though I was never meant to see you. Even though I was the one who was busy. You look too sane to be signalling now. But if I want to run away from my traitorous mind, I'd have to leave your words hung from the bannister unsaid. Like I had to leave his languid leaving, kissing knees, wine drunk goodwill, undone. I think it would hurt more to be undone by you. You're much cooler than him, he lowered my opinion of men underground. You're everything I've never had. You're a thought I had until I thought you were a thought I wasn't allowed to have. And know, there's no real way to know, is there? Not unless you told me. It's only been a week, please please pretty please could you tell me now. I don't want to be the fool again.

And they're right. I'm so preoccupied with being right, with being liked. I haven't taken much time to wonder if you're even one to choose. All of a nights dream was all it took - to imagine what it could be like to hang out with you. But is it like that when we hang out? Before I had these wandering ideas, it was all too easy. I'll copy and paste occurrences from then, and I think they look unmistakable in the sunlight, pure, untampered, genuine. But in this light, I can't help but wonder. You can only fall like a fool so many times. At least that's what I want to think.

My mind's moved too fast. I think this would make an epic slow burn narrative. But the days just won't move fast enough for my desires to love and be loved. It's the only lullaby I can use to fall asleep. And now it just keeps me awake. It was easier when I had no self-respect. It's harder now I'm trying to bleed on the cold, hard, earth. If I get to hang out with you again, will you leave any more low hanging words? Will you let me catch them? Will I even let you speak, or just start jumping for your mouth, manipulate the speech, the sounds?

I'm scared I don't know what I want. I'm scared I won't get to know now I've wandered down this path. I'm scared you're just another affable personality who likes to brush up against friends. Leech your body heat into mine, platonically. Touch me lightly, gently. Whisper the idea of affection, and the plausible deniability of everything else. Let me run amuck in this half designed landscape, half designed because you were never part of the designing committee anyway. Are you another one of those?

I have to say, I really do hate the touchy-feely brigade. They've left me a fool just so many times. And it never ends. It's just me and my calloused hands, burning with the weight of holding onto nothing. I'd rather let you go now.

I know only I can decide. Are you a friend or a foe or a something else. I just wanted to decide later. I just don't want to ruin it again. I just want to not lose another friend.

It's only been a week. I should give it more time. But oh how I wish you'd just show up again tomorrow and answer some questions. Oh, I'd love to see you. I've hyped you up in my head. But can you be regular to me again? Physically there, regularly apparent. Another person I'm happier I'm getting to know better.

[aswirlingvortex]

The truth is friends can’t lie,

They tell you sweet truths in the dance of platonic romance

You build that bridge out of the bricks of future come to pass

You watch your ship sink under bridges you once stood

Holding hands holding onto whatever works

Until it doesn’t.

Your friends tell you who they are

In whispered barely suppressed confession

The bubbling urge to lay bare

You know your friends naked

You learn the parts of themselves that scare them, because they tell you

Because you have nothing to gain

And everything to lose

Friends will tell you how they hurt

And you’ll hold their hands and soothe their truth

With real, false platitude

And it’s not charged, it’s free at the point of touch

It’s the freedom to love selfishly, selflessly

A more passionate romance never mattered anyway

Your friends will find it easier

To avert their gaze, look away, pretend they didn’t say

They have palm callouses from swords wielded between the second and third rib

But you’ll remember them the moment before they release your hand

The drowning breathe water knowingly

Because friends cannot lie

My friends and I have held flesh to flesh embrace,

My friends loved me truthfully, expansively, built me up to more than I’d ever hoped to be before I met them.

[aswirlingvortex]

omg it’s the leap years theory again

[aswirlingvortex]

silly second years

dangling cigarettes from dangling lips from dangling trees of secrets kept

teetering on windowsills on pinnacles, wandering eyes uncertain sighs make perfect lies

make up smeared across the face of dreams unmade. Make you make up make plans make mad make me make you made up perfect now

clusterfuck cucked cliques, cliché

aided, admonished, atrophied.

Framed in 1k. picture perfect day.

don’t debate friendship with me. don’t start the edging my voice; bolted, undead, lame. you put me down. green with unnurtured naivety, with envy

I’ll apologise to your girlfriend. She’s my friend so I can lie to her. Fuck her and her princess castle. Ride away on your fucking horse you bastard.

[aswirlingvortex]

something about train journeys and writing

suddenly nostalgic for times past, a deep set sadness for how in pain she was, how unsure she was, how stressed, how scared

she shouldn’t have had to go through that. I’m here now, but I can’t help wish she could’ve found it all easier, found it all happier.

Not that I wasn’t happy, when things were good, they felt amazing. But when things were bad, it was lonely. I remember she felt so lonely at the end.

And it’s not that it wasn’t fun. I’m almost doing it for fun now. I think it’s the sadness of feeling like I did it wrong. The best three years of life and I just don’t know if I did it right. I think I spent so long feeling like I wasn’t good enough. I spent so long struggling. I wish I could’ve done it all better than I did.

Alas, it’s over now. It’s gone can’t catch it. Maybe one day I’ll still get to prove them wrong. Maybe one day I’ll stop feeling like I need to.

Maybe one day. Anyway this is 23 in the making.

[aswirlingvortex]

thinking about how they pillaged the queer community, scared of interesting, forcing normal, regular, boring, because they were so scared of different.

how they made regular folk turn on each other in a unwinnable quest to be deemed most ‘of the like’. most un-queer.

and how deviants were forced to lie and liars forced to deviate. just to live. in any meaningful way damned, just any way possible.

And I thought it couldn’t be copied. It’s a different kind of hate. Except it isn’t. They still accuse without conviction. Turn corners expecting liars, expecting deception.

They’re so scared of themselves. they’re so scared who’d they’d be if given another choice. They’re so scared that what makes us different makes them different too.

Can’t they see they’re stuck in a paradox? If our difference threatens their normality, maybe, simply, we are just the same. Like we were before you ever learnt to fear us. When life had meaning.

They’re not scared of men. They’re not scared of women either.

Who are you really scared of?

[aswirlingvortex]

i remember the first time I threw a knife

without ever knowing I was gripping a hilt

I remember realising I was watching her realising there was only one thing worse than our inane pretentious obsession with the philosophy tutor

never hearing about it at all.

She said she didn’t realise they didn’t know I wrote songs. I have to be honest, until she said it I hadn’t really realised it at all. Perhaps because I write less than I did. It’s no longer my only emotional clutch. I grew up and out of the grinding gears that was 15.

But she was pleasantly surprised. I’m glad she was happy. She deserves to know that they aren’t friends like we were friends. I can’t sing my diary to them. I don’t trust them as unscrawled, unedited, unbecoming, as I understood my life with you. I loved you like I may never love a friend again. You deserve to know that.

The dates are aligning out of pocket. Time condenses like an accordion, playing harmonies in places I wasn’t expecting.

It’s frustrating losing arguments in hindsight. But a producer not a performer be, I guess. That’s the more honourable way to do it.

We hold our democrats to higher standards than our facists. I wonder why that is?

You don’t understand, you kill me. You only serve as a reminder of what I lost. It was never really real. But it was real in my head. And you killed it. Both of you, together. And selfishly or not I picked a side, because I can only ever survive half of you now. If you knew the whole of it I think you’d agree. Perhaps selfishly. I don’t mean to hurt you, I definitely don’t mean to hate you. But I can’t apologise for how it comes across. This is the best I can do. You’ll just have to learn to live with that I guess.

[aswirlingvortex]

off to make myself the person I wish

[aswirlingvortex]

maybe there’s a lesson at the end of the song, maybe we’ll look back on summer ‘24 and know we were going somewhere we couldn’t see yet. maybe this was the point all along. maybe I’ll take a paddle board and sulk and you’ll feel bad for a second and it’ll cancel out the months I felt tortured by you. maybe I’ll be on a train irritated by people who wouldn’t help like I might’ve done. maybe I’ll know deep down that it’s not a big deal really. Maybe I’ll buy a better shampoo. maybe gracie’s album will get better when I can hear it with both ears. maybe I’ll look back and be happy. maybe I’m not even sad right now. Maybe there’s a whole summer open to opportunity and exploration and I won’t need to live at home and it won’t feel like losing. It’ll feel like rory gilmore going on tour with barack obama in ‘09. maybe I’ll cry at the farewell party except it’s not like the series is ending for me. I get to continue living.

I just think that it’s all going to be fine. It’s all going to work out. And I’ll remember sitting on the sunny side of the train to Ipswich, and I’ll remember.

The ending is far off yet. S8 here we go…

[aswirlingvortex]

if not this, what then, was it all for?

[aswirlingvortex]

and I’m so scared of my potential: I’m so caught up I’d rather not even voice it. I even hate myself typing it right now, I’d rather speak it into the grass and have it preserved by some omnipotent force who also happened to pan to the dying sun set and my face against the light and capture the music just right.

oh there is man standing right there. there is also no one really around anymore. i probably should leave but i just wanted to sit and think and not have to worry for one second. I don’t think he’ll attack me.

Wow the music just said call me parents up and tell them i’m already home, I just did that.

i probably should start walking. I just was thinking, I want to cry, I want to cry and release this stress monster that I know if living inside me even if i’m not acknowledging it. But I can’t seem to cry.

Hold on for dear life. I’m so scared of my potential. I’ve spent my whole life being sure of it. And these past few years have felt like I was pushing my luck. That I was failing in two ways. The ways the wanted, but also the ways I thought I would be able to.

And it’s felt like delusion. It’s felt like lying in the worst way. Because I rarely ever lied to myself, and when I did, I knew deep down. But it’s almost like pulling the fears half into the open meant squashing them deep deep down inside. Like the counter weight for admitting some weakness was needing to carry the weight of strength all on my own. Like showing them my imperfections meant I couldn’t rely on their unfaltering faith.

And it was ironic because it was the faith was was killing me, but as it turns out, it was keeping my alive too.

None of this is meant to be pretty. I’m not trying to lie anymore. I don’t want to find some happy ending. I just want to cry.

But the tears won’t flow. The ball in my chest is still sat in my throat. I don’t know the answers.

The other thought I had was that strength builds. I just walked port meadow in the dark. Couldn’t do that a year ago, or even really 3 months ago. Not confidently. I just did it in the dark.

Progress is imperceptible and then all at once.

I think i want to scream into the night. Two boys had the same ideas as me, they’re on the spinning thing. Non-threatening I think. Not sure if they’ve noticed me. I should probably leave but kinda wild if they haven’t noticed me and I just walk past. Oh they’re leaving.

Also obsessed with signs. Depressed with over talking. Trying to believe I make the right decisions but still discouraged by the time slipping away from me before I was finished with it. I’ve never gotten it right with time.

I just. Don’t want to mess this up. So much. I just don’t want to think it’s all going to be okay, or I’ll just try my best and see. I want the pressure. I want to do it right. It’s just that I know the odds aren’t in my favour. I’ve spent three years failing to twist the arm of the clock.Probably should’ve been focusing on the hand.

I just don’t know if I have enough time. But I can’t go backwards anymore. It’s just not for certain. It’s chance and luck and all those other awful things.

Im walking past the pub I used to daydream about and wondering what kind of pain I was in to need to daydream about work free times. I guess Im doing the disservice again. I wasn’t not doing work. I was trying, my very hardest. I didn’t think, ah well fuck it. I wanted it so badly and tried and failed. Continuously. And it hurt. It hurt so fucking much to fail.

Failing against the metric I built for 19 years. Failed against the metric I was being measured against. I’m not an average personality.

I guess even if I took the time off, decided it was all not worth it. I wouldn’t enjoy that. I would hate that. More. Worse than trying and failing. Not trying at all.

It’s just me and trying against the world. Or at least against my small part of the world. It’s not certain. It’s not anything. It just is.

For someone who didn’t want to talk am now finding it hard to leave. The adhd is here because omg my tummy feels funny.

Now the guilt I guess. Okay going to power walk the rest and see what happens.

[aswirlingvortex]

well over a year later, i think I’ve successfully got off the train.

play lizzy mcalpine ‘nothing/sad n stuff’

[aswirlingvortex]

I know it’s not equivalent but something about the line “I am condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them” in an explicitly antifascist, anticapitalist show, funded and distributed by the disney corporation but written, created by artists, feels fucking meaningful

[aswirlingvortex]

WAIT HOLD ON. HOLD ON.

The swimming comment from episode 1. That cop snidely getting into Cassian’s business asking if he swam to get here aka derogatory reference to how some mexican immigrants swim to get across the border. but swimming to hopes of a better/more secure life with no guarantee.

and then Cassian in Episode 10… LITERALLY SWIMMING TO FREEDOM. WITH NO GUARANTEE OF SURVIVAL OR A MORE SECURE LIFE………. BUT YOU DO IT ANYWAYS. HE IS STILL BEING HUNTED AND PERSECUTED BUT HE HAS AT LEAST YANKED SOME SEMBLANCE OF AGENCY BACK INTO HIS OWN HANDS AND FOR NOW THAT IS ENOUGH.

Diego Luna told us to our faces multiple times in interviews that this is an immigrant story. But to see it executed so beautifully with so many different facets just brings me to tears