#STOP WANTING! its about duty and goodness. who care about your lonely soul we strive towards a larger goal.

[outlyingthoughts]

1:58, exam szn & cuffing szn: Oct 19.

It’s 1:58 on the small digital clock of my computer. Sleep is a scarce during exam period, either fearing to fail professionally or at life in its entirety. College students roam around campus from 8am to 12am. One cigarette break after another, groups, nationalities and pasts meet and strive among one another. Just over a glimpse of sunshine, all our youthful bodies plead the rays to caress our skins.

It’s normally soft and overwhelming, but today it made me shiver. Crawling inside, overthinking, social anxiety and aching mood swings, burst up under my skin and words can’t reach my mouth. Today, I tried to tell the words, vomit all that was weighing on my guts, but instead watery spheres glide innocently out of my eyes. All the uni students were out, early afternoon airy light, all holding the profound belief that it was the last time we’ll see this star while my only profound belief, almost primal, was that I had never been this lonely. I probably had a couple of notifications left to check and more people to greet, but tears blurred the warm rays and my vision; I ran away.

Coming back from my short exile, the words were seating lower, down my throat, stuck, fat with meaning and emotions. Scanning the curious or worried eyes of my friends, shame burnt my fingers, my hands suddenly fidgeting faster and faster. Dismissing my unrestful inner crybaby and its whiny instincts, I dismissed your questions: exam season, exam season is the reason.

For it’s not a lie but rather an incomplete truth; exam season is a closed Tupperware in which we all marinate, trapped, we may mix well as a dish but still the steam on the lid hovers above our heads. Threatening, the pearls born from condensation are reminders of the future ahead, of our responsibilities of today for tomorrow, of our parents back home, expectations and knowing that deception won’t be an option. Afraid to never become the person I’ve promised myself to be throughout my almost two decades of life experience, anxiety grows from my expectations. I grow with my fears, drowning at times, closing my eyes facing them most of the time. It’s a sweet life one can have when all fears are just hidden under a big invisibility cap. But electro-shocks revive those old friends like rusty hearts, and within two blinks of an eye, closing my eyes to them becomes impossible. Crushed by the size they grew to while my eyes were closed, my terrors can’t blink, eyeless, they just smell my weaknesses and dig blindly into them.

Well nested within the stress of exam season, my fear of not-making-it-in-life is now a recurring motif of my anti-climax drama. Being away from home is both a blessing and a curse, finding yourself by leaving also means losing yourself in the novelty; all the responsibilities from before fuse away from my brain: I forget about the pain, I forget about the past, I live moments as if they were pearls from an necklace without a string. I feel guilty I’m afraid of changing, even more afraid of going back. As if all Zoes I might have been were finally meeting, they’re loud and all take too much room, yet they don’t bring me enough and I can’t handle any of it. I’m afraid when the lights turn out that I won’t be able to “reach out” anymore, as if the bluetooth function had been turned off, I can’t say the things I mean, my eyes can’t remember what they normally look at when I listen or talk, they move around like balls of onyx, dark empty of colors, my mouth opens and my body moves but it’s not me anymore. Anxiety took over and I retreat, sometimes I peek through and my eyes look up at you my friend.

I wish you could see me looking at you, I’m worried for both of us. I’m worried because I know you’re not doing good, I’m worried because it feels like I can’t convey that I’m not either. then the guilt takes over: I insult the selfish bitch in the back of my head that cries for help (who are you to think your issues are more pressing, painful and threatening than others?). Suddenly I watch all the words, I weight all the moves, trying to take the least amount space in the room, of words in the discussion, of my presence in the moment: trying hard to give you as many options as possible to forget about me. And sometimes it feels like it works, and with an explosion in my heart, I retreat further, like a lost kid. It’s all worst when you start doubting the people you care the most about; but how can they care about someone like you?

Such a puzzle, further in the retreat, I still want you to find me but won’t move I’m too afraid you’d notice I’m still here and decide it’s time to ditch me. Caught up between feeling like you shouldn’t be here and wanting to be here, share at home where your heart is, I’m paralyzed. That’s why the sun didn’t bake my soul like it normally does. A fear of not being compatible with the people you relate the most too, like the uncle hated in the family, it becomes constant obsession, sickened brain that tries to find proves and clues in meaningless words and thoughtless behaviors, you exclude yourself in your own paranoia, you’re afraid to not be loved by the ones you cherish, yet another recurring motif.

It turns everything into a fog, daily duties aren’t linked and I tumble through life either with intense bliss or destructive deception. Loss of satisfaction, because suddenly nothing has taste anymore. Almost as if, without the belief in the love from your surrounding, all turns fade and cold. So I look for a home in everything, dwell over new routines, new projects, but mainly the past. All but concentrate on the keys available today, I project, continuously trying to understand others while I can’t begin to find the words to put over my inner turmoils. My mind simply gets lost, jumping to conclusions, dropping the arms try to get out of my mental messes. Trying to open up, spill one more time all the pains but still nothing comes out, I’ve already said it all in bits but I can’t bring myself to connected the dots for you as I fear if you saw it too, you’d confirm it all. It’s too hard to look back at what you were, the intensity that was once yours, almost fearless in the arms of someone. It’s hard to know that one year ago, you were in love and in denial, softly coated in illusions. It’s harder when the only person you want to talk about it with was the one comforting you in these illusions; the hardest when that person knew all about your discomforts, your fears, silences and reality. When that person met your heart on another level, the hardest when now, there is nothing left but bitterness, anger, regrets and derision.

It’s so hard when I call you and you don’t answer, harder when you don’t call back, the hardest when we’re in the same city and it feels like we walked past each other a million time and only I looked back as you went on. When we’re in the same city, I see you everywhere, I see heartbreak everywhere. It reminds me that I was once vulnerable, and my core tells me I won’t ever be. There’s a profound sadness radiating  in my chest when such reminders are flagged across my mind. I know that for now I’m fine, I’m in the age of fun and fear of commitment, but sooner than later, I’ll stay behind, as they’ll all walk past.

Hand in hand, and now I’m holding my own, strong grip, small and dry hand, I hate its texture under my own fingers and don’t wonder why no one is holding my hand. I’ll be behind, numbed by emotional unavailability, I’ll be a late bloomer, late to the party, hurried into the cab of marriage and motherhood for I’ll convince myself it’s all I ever wanted. Maybe I’ll put a stop to it, jump out through a quick and clean divorce, I’ll retreat once again, either I won’t want to bother you, as you’ve been the love of my life but I was never yours, or I won’t want to have nothing to do with you, as you were never the one, only trapped me because I know I don’t deserve better. It’s so hard to get back “into” life once you feel like you’re not welcomed in it anymore. I’m not welcomed anymore in love and affection, I feel like I’m not welcomed anymore in breathing freely, I feel myself changing and I’m afraid of her, of my reflection in the mirror. I’m afraid of becoming who I fear to become.

At night, when I’m alone, he surges and I can’t sleep after a day of panic. I open youtube and a TED talk about “overcoming the fear of love” rolls on. Trillion Small tells me that our neuronal system has mechanisms of defense. It recognizes what hurts you and when you encounter one of its components or something similar, apparently police sirens blasts in your brain. My fear of love shakes my soul, whenever someone mentions having to put trust and vulnerability on the line, sirens cry and my instinct runs: it’s already hard enough to not doubt my friends’ love, how could I trust that one could give me his full incompromised devotion?

So I shake further in my fears of the future, failing, love, past and paranoia. Unfortunately, this year, exam season and cuffing season overlap and my fears turn cross-sectional.

It’s 3:22 on the digital clock now. Drake on the speaker says “she could do better” and she asks if “he’s drunk right now”. My tea is cold and so are the salty puddles on my keyboard. I wish my mouth allowed me to ask questions but Billie in the next song tells me not to ask questions I don’t want the answer to.