#maybe i shouldn’t watch it while i‘m depressed

[sekiseinko]

✨just a few sad bf gifs that make me want to die✨

[k-odyssey]

Start-Up | thoughts on the ending + the drama as a whole

I didn’t expect the finale to make me tear up, but the grandma character is too powerful. She loves with her whole heart.

I don’t like that she and Dal Mi never had a conversation about the web of lies that she originated. I know that it’s in Korean culture to respect your elders and I know that she raised her granddaughter with all the love and care in the world, it just doesn’t sit right with me not to mention it. It’s kind of like she let Dal Mi go out into the adult world while still letting her believe Santa is real. That being said, I still love her.

Grandma’s funny, she’s competent, and she’s kind. I‘m not sure I’ve liked a halmeoni character so much since Just Between Lovers. She just takes in lost souls (Ji Pyeong, her ex-daughter in law) because she can!

I thought it was a lovely touch to show that she’s incapable of sitting still, even in old age, even in blindness. She may grumble about corn dogs and Dal Mi’s mother but the thought of feeding people and helping others is what gets her out of bed in the morning. She needs to feel useful, otherwise she’s depressed. I don’t know, I found it to be a very nuanced and touching portrayal of an older lady.

I’m realizing these days that my favourite character in any show tends to be the loneliest character. Are they lonely? Yes? It’s my character, the one I will project onto, and you can’t take them away. Of course here it’s Ji Pyeong.

I find his brand of “I’m so lonely but I can’t let myself be vulnerable” so relatable. He wants to be loved so badly but also protects himself. He’s so sure that he’s going to be cut off that he tries to do it first, so it’ll hurt less. The way halmeoni sees through him and the way he lets go when she does is so comforting. Especially in the finale where she tells him “don’t make yourself any lonelier.”

I’m just gonna leave their dialogue here so I can cry later while re-reading it.

Good Boy, are you going somewhere? Where would I go? Ji-pyeong. You said I shouldn't call you if I'm doing well. I'm doing a bit too well these days. I'm pretty busy. I'll call you when I'm going through-- Don't do that. Call me even if you're doing well. Visit me often. Come see me whether something happens or not. Why would I if nothing's happened? Just come over. Come over and talk nonsense I'm almost deaf and blind now. You can say and do anything in front of me. Laugh and cry all you want. I won't ask why. So come see me often. You shouldn't get too used to being alone. Don't… become any lonelier, Ji-pyeong, okay? Okay. It's okay. Don't cry. I'm here for you.

Ji Pyeong got a pretty good ending in my opinion. After this scene, it definitely feels like they are family and will always be, regardless of his feelings about Dal Mi. In the end, he was honest with Dal Mi and with Do San. He apologized when he was supposed to, learned to be kinder, told Dal Mi that she didn’t owe him anything. And he has fulfilling things in his life (his job, charity work), even if his love turned out to be one-sided. He’s much happier than the More than Friends CEO...

I think the drama took an interesting route by making Dal Mi end up not with her first love but with Do San, and only after they were both ready to be together. I don’t have much more to say about Do San cause I already wrote several hundred words about him. It feels strange that he would deliberately chose to go to the US and stay at a job where he was so very unhappy, but I can kind of buy it since he did for his friend and because he was heartbroken.

I wanted Do San and Ji Pyeong to be close so badly and things didn’t turn out that way, but they made up, so I can just imagine them being close in the future I guess. Also I really really really liked their drunken conversation about being envious of each other.

Dal Mi is also a great character. I love her enthusiasm and her determination. Of all of the roles I’ve seen Suzy play, I liked her in this one the most. Maybe what Ji Pyeong likes and admires so much about Dal Mi is her willingness to let herself be vulnerable, which he finds so difficult. She’s willing to sail without a map whereas he thinks in probabilities and risks. The difference is that she grew up with a support system, and he didn’t. (Also he liked that she needed him, which for a lonely person feels amazing.)

Dal Mi and Do San looked great as a power couple at the very end. I would watch a show about them as married people! I would watch more shows about married people, if they were made and made well.

So did I enjoy the first 8 episodes a whole lot more than the rest of the drama? Yes, but I still think it’s worth watching till the end. Also I forgot to say In Jae and grandma made me tear up as well!!! And there was a perhaps a little too obvious but not unpleasant symmetry between the 1st and last ep.

Now I’ll just nitpick at details so you can stop here if you like. If you’ve read this far, thank you. :)

I don’t believe there is a way to make a software that recognizes pills because I don’t believe they make each pill a different shape and size. I say this as someone who’s filled their grandma’s pillbox more than once. In the twenty or so kinds of pills she takes, there’s at least 2 that are nearly identical. And the way you make sure you take the right pill at the right time is by... putting them in a pillbox. Simple, yet effective.

It was kinda boring that we all knew who had hacked the company but they took ages to figure it out. But either way, ever heard of a non-compete close? Cause I feel like a) Do San and the boys should have had them in their contracts and b) Artemis and Apollo too. How do they switch from one company to the other and work on the same kind of program just like that?

[myaekingheart]

summer road trip 2018 ; day three

I didn’t get a chance to write this out the day of in the hustle and bustle of everything so I‘m doing it now. At 1am on a Sunday night. Oops. But anyways, I slept better on Friday night than I did Thursday night so that was good, even though I shouldn’t have. I slept on the pullout couch in my parents’ hotel room and I could literally feel every single spring in the mattress so that wasn’t fun. And yet somehow I still slept pretty decently. We woke up early, got dressed and showered and whatnot and then we went downstairs for breakfast which was great. I was starving and they had pretty good food. I ate mini omelets and tater tots. We ran into my cousin, the one who was getting married that night, and her family down there, as well, and got to all eat together which was wonderful. I haven’t seen my cousin in ages but I feel like in a way we’re kind of like kindred spirits or whatever. We were really close when I was a kid-- she used to sleepover all the time and she and my aunt would always babysit me, and we had a great time every time even though we’re nine years apart. She was like the big sister I never had, really, and I regret moving away because it meant we drifted drastically. We both are kind of goofy and fun and have anxiety issues and our cats are basically twins so that’s cool. But anyways, so we eat breakfast together and then my dad dropped my mom and I off to go get our hair done. I was incredibly excited since I had really been looking forward to this. Not that I wasn’t excited for the wedding, too, because I was, but I’ve been meaning to get my hair cut for months. I just kept putting it off because I didn’t feel entirely comfortable walking into a Hair Cuttery in my town by myself and running the risk of running into someone I might know or something. I hadn’t gotten a haircut since last summer, though, when I got side swept bangs and layers and in the year since then, they‘ve both grown out and my hair ended up looking kind of lifeless and just...there. I really wanted to do the same sort of thing again, though, and really commit to the indie scene hairstyle I love so much (yeah, I know it’s outdated. Shoot me). My mom went so far as to make an appointment for us, too, which was even better. I was expecting the two of us to sit there getting our hair done shooting the shit and laughing and just having a great fucking time. But of course, let’s face it. This is me we’re talking about here and we all know my luck. We checked in and my mom got called back immediately. Meanwhile I sat there for thirty fucking minutes waiting for someone to call my name. People who had gotten there after me were getting called back before I did. I was about to have a fit. A part of me felt like I was going to cry. I felt left out, truthfully, watching my mom get her hair done meanwhile I was stuck back in the waiting area with no fucking clue how long I was going to be stuck there. I was panicking, truthfully. I started second guessing myself, thinking maybe this wasn’t worth it. Eventually, I did, in fact, finally get called back. I made friends with the girl who shampooed my hair which was probably the only good thing about this trip. Someone else was assigned to cut my hair and apparently no amount of meticulous preparation was enough. I had nearly 70 reference pictures of exactly what I wanted and what I got was honestly not even close. I will admit that there was at least one very valid excuse for why she fucked up and that was because the fire alarm randomly went off while she was doing my hair and she probably got flustered and disoriented or something. Nobody had any idea what was going on and it was clearly stressful for everyone so I mean, I will put that into consideration. Still, though, I don’t think that’s a good enough excuse for what she did. I’ll start with the more tolerable fuck-up: the layers. In that I swear she didn’t give me any. I was watching her cut my hair and I mean, it looked like she was cutting layers into it so I was really confused when, at the end of it all, I looked at my hair and there are legit no fucking layers in there. It’s all one even length. I would know. I got layers last time and it was very clear that I had layers. The most intolerable fuck-up, however, were the bangs. I cannot even begin to explain how disappointed and depressed I am about how she cut my bangs. She apparently had absolutely no idea what the fuck she was doing. She asked me what side I normally part my hair and I told her on the right and so she started cutting with the intention of them sweeping to the right. I told her she could probably tell which part of my hair was once my bangs the last time I got them cut because they were shorter than everywhere else, and she asked me if I wanted them the same thickness. When I told her I wanted them thicker, she looked at me like I had three heads. But I had a goal. I had something in mind. I wanted that typical indie scene hair where your bangs start all the way back at, like, your crown and are all brushed forward. So at least she cut them at the right thickness, even if she thought it was blasphemous. The way she cut them was the most horrendous fucking thing I have ever seen, though. She said something about angling them but the way she worded it made me confused and question whether she really knew what she was doing. I learned quickly that she most definitely did not. Instead of cutting them angling downward like a normal human being, she cut them nearly straight across from, like, the start of my ear to my nose. The only hindrance on the straightness was that it was longer nearer to my face. Like inverted side swept bangs. When she was finished, she asked me how I liked it with this look on her face like “What the fuck kind of weird-ass alien style do you even have?” I lied and told her I loved it. The reasoning behind this was two-fold: I didn’t want her to feel bad if I bitched, and if I bitched I didn’t want her to try and fix it because I knew she’d only make it worse. Afterward I wanted nothing more than to run to the hotel room and just fucking disappear but my mom had some other errands to run and truthfully, I did, too, so we ran to Ulta and got her some new mascara and Old Navy to get me some new flip-flops because the cats completely ruined my old ones (which, truthfully, were ready to go anyways since I’ve had them since like freshman year of high school if not longer). When we were finally done with that, my dad picked us up and let’s just say he definitely didn’t think either of our looked great, either. My mom got a long, layered bob which the hairdresser curled with a flat iron and it looked really cute except for around the face where they curled a few small pieces far too tight which my dad said made her face look heavier and I thought it made her more resemble a poodle or something. At least for her it was an easy fix. I promised I’d work with it myself and make it look better, since I already had in mind exactly what I was going to do with it. My case was much more dire. I had no idea how to fucking fix this mess that this hairdresser made of my hair, and that was terrifying to me. I’ve always been really opinionated about my hair, and it’s kind of a massive source of my self esteem. When I chopped off twenty inches after graduating high school, I had a minor crisis. So you can only imagine how much this affected me. At least the good thing is that I am a wizard at making bad hair look good and messing with hair. That’s one thing cosplaying Disney princesses has taught me. My Ariel wig was bought on sale at a Halloween store and it took me two hours to tease the bangs and shape them into what they are now. I feel like if you look at it, you’d never guess it was $15 from Spirit. But human hair isn’t like wig hair. It’s softer and has a mind of it’s own. And this was perhaps the most horrifyingly drastic case I had ever been subjected to. I feel blessed to have discovered that my bangs looked better if I parted my hair on the opposite side, even if I hate having to do that. One of the big reasons I part my hair on the right all the time is because I have some really intense dry scalp issues on that side only and when I part my hair on the right, it means it’s easier to cover. Plus both Violet Parr and Rapunzel have their hair parted on the right and it made me happy knowing I did the same. Now that my bangs are completely fucked up, though, I have no choice but to revert to the left. Once I discovered how much better it looked when I did this, though, it made fixing it up a lot easier. The minute I got back to the hotel, I made a beeline for the bathroom with a pair of shitty orange scissors (you know, the kind literally everyone has that are dull and from, like, the 90s) and basically went to town. I brushed my bangs forward so that it would start from the crown and snipped side pieces so that I turned this:

Into this (after I also styled it for the wedding):

I feel really grateful I was able to fix it to where it was at least tolerable but my heart still breaks every time I think about what happened and how it’s still not exactly what I want, even after going at it myself. I might just have to go to a hair dresser somewhere in my town when I get home and ask for layers because I was about to do them myself but then I realized I had no idea what I was doing and I didn’t want to make myself practically bald for the wedding. Curling my hair helped a lot, too, since it made my hair look a little more put together and made my bangs look more like what I intended. My hair, both fixing it and then styling it for the wedding, definitely took the longest out of all of my wedding prep, though. I somehow managed to finish my makeup in, like, ten minutes which I thought was pretty impressive. Once I was finished, I helped my mom with her hair and my dad went down to the lobby to bring my grandparents up so we could load my stuff into their car. We decided that because my parents wanted to go around meeting up with friends and drinking on Sunday, and I’m not legal yet and would be insanely bored, I was going to go home from the reception with my grandparents and spend the day with them instead. The only issue was trying to figure out how to get my stuff into their car since my parents were taking the shuttle to the venue and my grandparents didn’t want to come back to the hotel afterward. We resolved to, obviously, have them stop by our place first, load my stuff into their car, and then we’d all leave. I ended up going with them to the wedding while my parents waited for the shuttle over, rather than them pile in with us and only take the shuttle back. My cousin and her fiance got married at a golf resort which I know sounds weird when you first say it but it really was beautiful. When we entered the lobby, there was a glass table in the center with lanterns and pictures of the happy couple. The employees asked everyone to make their way back to the small bar room so as to not congest the entryway. My dad got him and my mom a beer which they then took to the ceremony with them (but then again, my cousin and her fiance are in the brewery business so I mean, the alcohol was a-flowing). The ceremony took place outside “in the woods”, so to speak. When I first heard that, I was expecting a half mile trek into the deep wilderness with bugs and humidity but instead it was right on the edge of the golf course in front of a relatively thick layer of trees. There was a beautiful little arch made of wood and leaves and they were married by a female minister the fiance knew from his youth group as a kid. It was really a gorgeous wedding and everyone cried. My heart melted when the fiance walked up the aisle already crying, and then my cousin surprised him by walking up the aisle to what was his grandparent’s favorite song. After they were officially married, they and the rest of the bridal party ran off to get formal pictures taken while everyone migrated to a patio for cocktails and hors d’ourves. I didn’t eat anything there mainly because my stomach has been finicky and I didn’t really want to push my luck but it was weird to hear my dad say I could have an alcoholic drink if I wanted to so long as my mom got it for me instead of him (for reasons I‘m not going to delve into). I guess he figures with my turning 21 in a week, he’s cutting me some slack and letting me break the rules a bit since I’m so close. I mean, he let me take sips from an alcohol-filled pineapple last summer, too, so.... But anyways, I resolved not to drink anyways because the idea of breaking the law essentially made me anxious, even if it wasn’t technically a huge problem in this case. Cocktails lasted about an hour, during which one of my aunts and uncles gave me my birthday present early (some money and a really awesome collectible Audrey Hepburn lunchbox which my aunt said she found last summer and hasn’t seen the likes of which since) and then everyone filtered into the ballroom for dinner and dancing. I only did one of the two and that was dinner. We had fancy salads (that were legit greens wrapped in a shred of cucumber and it looked cool as fuck), lemon sherbet for a palette cleanser, filet mignon and shrimp with some roasted veggies and mashed potatoes on what I‘m pretty sure was a mushroom??? And then there was an entire room dedicated to dessert, and tons of pizza was delivered at 10pm because why the fuck not. I only ate a bit of the sherbet and then a good deal of the entree and then stopped there because, again, I didn’t want to test my finicky stomach. I spent the night watching all the important dances like the newlyweds first dance, the father-daughter dance between my cousin and uncle, and my mom twirling around the flower girls. Since I under very few circumstances will ever dance, I expected to be really bored the entire night, as I usually am at weddings. Instead, I ended up having a fantastic time talking with one of my cousins who also cosplays. We ended up out in the hallway having a massive fangirly conversation about our favorite characters, our cosplaying, cartoons, video games. It was great. And truthfully, it was the first time we had ever really actually had a full conversation together. We’re friends on social media and shit, of course, but that’s nothing compared to actual, live conversations. It made the night go by much quicker, and much more enjoyably, to be quite honest. So after that and witnessing party crashers, my “I know my limits” father run by me with cake and ice cream yelling “GET JIMMIES! NOT SPRINKLES, JIMMIES!!”, and the groom hoisted onto someone’s shoulders chugging beer and fist bumping, my grandparents decided it was time to head out and so the three of us said our goodbyes to everyone and started the trek home. It was a 45min drive apparently but it felt way shorter either because it really was, or maybe that’s just what a total of 16 hours in a car previously does to you. But anyways, when we got home, my grandfather unloaded the car and I moved into their guest bedroom and we basically all just went to sleep. If we could even sleep. My allergies have been flaring like crazy lately, probably because the pollen is different here and the trees are still a little bare from winter, so I pretty much slept with a box of tissues in my bed but I mean, whatever. At least I slept at all, you know?

[torixus]

Sixteen Note on How To End A Life" by Late Chukwuemeka Akachi

Chukwuemeka Akachi who committed Suicide in UNN yesterday wrote this book before he died...  😢😢😢😢

"Sixteen Note  on How To End A Life"  16. I thought I would never write this story. 15. I’m trying. 14. “Sir, when was the last time you thought of killing yourself?” “Now” “Do you want to talk about it?” “Can we reschedule?” 13. Today I came home with a belly drenched in litres of petrol I forced down my throat. This story will never end, but it does have a beginning.  * My depression eats me patiently and washes me down with the sound of the silence in my bedroom. This is how I learn that when you stretch your body to occupy spaces, it weaves itself into a form of its own, another excuse to feel smaller each time you climb into your bed. 12. On the bus, the woman next to me didn’t seem to notice I probably wouldn’t be alive in the next thirty minutes. I thought when you want to kill yourself, you will be visibly marked. Everyone would notice. The driver waved me into his bus, after asking me my location, as if the petrol sitting in my stomach wasn’t enough to fuel his car all the way to the nearest cemetery. I didn’t tell him. Instead, I asked him to stop me at the Catholic Cathedral, I should find a therapist there. I thought he would see the sign. He is marked, the sign should say. Nobody saw it. I was dizzy and everything was becoming fuzzy. How could they not see that? God should have sent somebody. He/she/they should have stopped me. What kind of god lets a human-time-bomb, forged in litres of petrol, liquid fire, to walk into a bus and sit next to a woman thinking of dinner?  11. “Breathe. Breathe. I hope the couch is comfortable?”  “Should I turn off the air conditioner?”  “Why did you want to kill yourself?”  “Can you hear me, Sir?” 10. The church is the earliest memory I have of my childhood. Mum made us go to all the bible study sessions in the children’s ministry. In Wukari, Taraba state, where I grew up, the children’s ministry was much organised. There were series of classes that you had to pass through and they actually took exams. I don’t remember anything from those classes. Sunday school. Evening bible study. Monday classes. None. Maybe I was just too young. I remember the black fruit we plucked after services. My elder sister and my cousin. I don’t remember how we are related. I remember the pimples on my cousin’s face and how I stared at them whenever she bent to pick out fruits. They always seemed to be rotten by the time they fell. All I remember about my sister is the cheerful-coloured gowns she wore, with a hat to match each one. It was 2003 or so and I don’t know how old I was. I wasn’t up to six years old. I remember it in showers. Light showers. 9. “Would you say that your childhood was pleasant?”  “Why are you smiling? So it was pleasant then?” (Laughter)  * Growing up, I was taught how to laugh in-between the lines, in monosyllables that come off neat and harmless. Nobody taught me how to envy my skin or write love letters to myself or peace. I learnt everything I was taught I had to or I wouldn’t move to the next class 8. I don’t remember saying much. In church, at home. I say a little at school. I just remember being at those places. Not a single sentence. I was everywhere I was supposed to be, rather, my mum thought I was supposed to be, without leaving a trace. After the children’s Sunday services, we had to wait for the adults to dismiss. That is the only memory I have of the church. It was like floating in and out of places. Children running around, climbing cashew trees, picking rotten mangoes, tasting them, spitting them out, crying, letting themselves be consoled, wiping the tears, starting all over again. It was all like a silent movie to me. Only, I was in the cast. I ran, cried, did everything and never said anything. I wasn’t a quiet boy, I was just mute. 7. “Any memories you might want to share with me?” “Are you happy, Sir?”  “Let me help you?” 6. Onyinye. She was much older than I was, but she still, somehow, winded up beside me the whole time. We were together the way an ocean clings to a sinking ship. Once, she suggested we played father and mother, and then chose to be father. I remember her lying on the pew, where bibles were dropped in the children session, smiling down at me. Me: an abandoned child in a war zone, lying on the seat of the same pew, staring at this girl, who seemed to be just happy, lying there, saying nothing. I remember my ‘cousin’ calling to take me home. I don’t remember saying goodbye. * You know, moths have no choice than to flirt with flames. When the flames bite their wings, they call it exercise and apply first aid. It’s their destiny. 5. The first time I ever thought of killing myself was in Nsukka. I wanted pass any sharp thing through my body.  Dad stayed in Nsukka, Enugu state, alone. Whenever he visited, he would bring bread — even though mum sold bread at our store — and most importantly, avocados. Those were scarce in the north. Bread and avocado was his favourite too. At that time, one of them was sold for #50. My mother couldn’t sell avocados in our shop because our neighbour already did. The northerners didn’t ask for it anyway. Our shop was the first in a row of shops owned by Igbo people. Selling avocado would have been a waste of money. Only the Igbos who lived in our street, Akata Street, bought them and every other shop in that row sold it. I remembered my dad for avocados and hard luck. Each time he came, something bad happened to me. One night, my elder sister urinated in my bathing water and my mum made me use it. My sister had beaten me while we were alone at home. I don’t really know why she did that. I managed to run the few blocks it took to reach the shop. I cried so hard that my father got me a bottle of Sprite, and handed me some slices of bread. At night, my sister struck. My mother didn’t believe me. Maybe, she felt I was just being mischievous, and made me bathe with the water.  I remember crying. I remember the water and my sister’s urine washing the tears in joint mockery. Something bad happens whenever my father comes back, but I still wanted him to. Avocados.  No one asked if I wanted to move or not. Perhaps I was just too young. I don’t even remember packing my bags. But I remember the journey. I was sitting on my father’s lap in the seat closest to the window. We: my mom, sister, cousin and I used to visit my dad in Nsukka from time to time, but that was all it was, visits. I had already made home out of a strange land. My sister would have slapped me if she heard me call Wukari my home. This time, I was supposed to stay in Nsukka for a longer time. Maybe forever. I’m not sure how I felt about that. I hummed the few Hausa songs I learnt till I got tired. And then forgot, all of them. * Memories are lonely horse riders. They never stay too long in a new town. They are always on the road. I’m learning to love them without getting committed. 4. When I held the knife in our bedroom in Nsukka, I was standing next to the red cupboard that had cracked glasses. My father kept a couple of fancy ceramics we never used there, right next to the kitchen knife. It was on a Sunday morning. I had chicken pox and my dad rubbed a white lotion all over my body. Onyinye could be playing in a church, thousands of miles away. She could still be lying on that pew, saying nothing, smiling down at a different boy this time. Maybe, I was the sinking ship the ocean was trying to hold on to. When I forgot the Hausa songs we sang on the playground, I forgot faces too. I no longer remembered what she looked like. The only recurrent memory I had of her was a Gif file: a girl lying on a church pew, and a boy staring at her. Blankly. Not knowing what it means for a girl that age to climb a pew for him. The blade was sharp. I had watched my dad cut onions and peel avocadoes with it. I pointed it to my stomach in one slow movement and watched the tip flirt with my shirt buttons. I felt that if I died, all the people in the children’s ministry would have to attend. I didn’t win all those bible quizzes for nothing. All the teachers knew me. I had even seen the coordinator several times, talking to my mother after services. Onyinye would come. Everyone would come. I couldn’t get through with it each time. I always let the knife dance around my shirt for a while before I put it back. I repeated it every day. I can’t remember when I stopped trying, but I remember not telling anyone, including myself. That was the first time. 3. “Son, why then did you come all this way to this place if you will not speak to me?”  “Please say something, you have been mute since you asked for a reschedule?”  “Are you sure you don’t need a priest instead, because I’m just a therapist?”  “Ok, let’s reschedule. Thanks for coming” (Door closes) * I give my body options and it always chooses to baptize itself in seas because they say salt are water made flesh. But the salt my body chooses is an abusive lover who changes its taste so when I look in the mirror I tell myself that I need a new one and the only way to wear a new body is to die and when I say I die every day, it’s not a decision, it’s just my nature 2.  I‘m marked. The man in charge of the universe shouldn’t let living ghosts like me roam his planet. There was no reason for drinking the petrol. The only difference between today and the days I stood next to the red cupboard, knife in hand, is that I’m twenty. I am a final year student of a university in Nigeria, who is more interested in finding more ways to end his life, than actually living it. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t know I would try to end my life again. A rainbow can never wash off his colours. He will never be clean. I just walked into a filling station and asked for two litres of petrol. The attendant looked at me like I just walked out of the sky. I got the point and crossed the road to buy two nylons. She glanced furtively at me as the nozzle spat fuel. She was handing me my funeral clothes. Inadvertently. No one could see the mark. Every time I walk out of my bedroom I am aware that I’m an unforgiveable sin. People like me shouldn’t be allowed to walk free with all the monsters our depression carves into our brains. The attendant watched a sin walk free and did nothing about it. My mother, well, she will certainly cry. My sister never cries. She might just knit silently for two months till the grief slips through her needle. My father would just grunt for a week and go back to peeling avocadoes, with the same kitchen knife that flirted with my shirt buttons. My memory will never stick. I pity the therapists I have visited over the years. I never spoke to any of them. A moth will always dance to flames. I tried petrol because kerosene didn’t work out the last time. I threw up in my bedroom and the whole plan was gone. I was in second year then. Death is a safe pair of hands whispering my name, and I draw closer every day. A mere therapist’s questions can’t make me betray his trust. No bride leaves death at the altar. At twenty, there is not much difference between now, and the night my sister peed in my bathing water. I’m still the boy who doesn’t know how to shout at bullies. Who still falls for every girl in the playground (she doesn’t even have to lie on a pew). Who still floats into spaces without occupying them. Who leaves no traces. Who is mute. My bed feels smaller each time I lie on it. The boy never grew up. Life still pees in every bucket of water I use. My bathroom walls look on helplessly as the liquid mockery trickles into my mouth. My bathing water is always warm. Why can’t anyone see my mark? I never belonged here. I’m still too young to understand anything. The boy that watched a kitchen knife flirt with his buttons and said nothing still lives here. For some reason, the knife has not stopped flirting with me. We are in a long term relationship now. I lie on the bed and let the rumble in my stomach continue. This is going to be the last attempt. This will be a long night. It has been an hour since I left the therapist’s office, and I’m spoon-feeding this story to my journal. No one holds my pain more than he does. When I fall asleep, I’m never going to wake up again. I am ready to dream myself into a shiny casket.  This is the longest story I have ever written. Goodnight therapist, filling station attendant, driver, woman on the bus, sister, cousin, mum, dad, Onyinye. I forgive you. I’m the sin here. I’m unforgiveable. 1. I wake up. Again......... (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); via Blogger http://bit.ly/2WLJsOp

[myaekingheart]

With this author visiting my class tomorrow, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the distinction between literary and genre fiction and my feelings on both. Before I started this class, I didn’t really know the difference. I didn’t understand what, exactly, literary fiction was. I just thought fiction was fiction. It had it’s own subsets like fantasy and horror and YA but they all had certain similarities with each other that denoted their categorization overall as fiction. Now that I kind of understand the difference, though, I’m trying to sort out my feelings on each and figure out if modern day literature is blurring the lines between the two. Apparently literary fiction is just very character-centric, merit-based, introspective work. It’s supposed to be layered and provide some sort of social of psychological commentary. It’s often written by authors who teach writing in universities and is sponsored or something, apparently. And it seems as if it’s held in this really high regard. If you ask me, I’m starting to suspect that literary fiction is just pretentious. Nobody ever does anything. It’s just all flowery language meant to be hyper-symbolic and speak to your soul. That’s all fine and dandy, like if that’s your cup of tea then fine. I appreciate the sentiment and artistry behind literary fiction because I know it’s not easy to write-- believe me, I’m trying. We have to write a short story for my class for workshops and I’m struggling. But the reason I’m struggling is because I’m hung up on whether what I‘m writing is of any merit or not. I’m so outrageously focused on whether it’s truly literary fiction or if I’m not grasping the concept and that’s really tripping me up. It’s my understanding that literary fiction doesn’t go anywhere. It’s stagnant. You hang around inside someone’s head for a while and that’s the whole thing. But then I think about if that’s what literary fiction really is, or if I’m misconstruing the definition. It’s character-centric, based on “yearning” as my teacher says. The more I think about this criteria, though, the more I think to myself, “Doesn’t genre fiction already have a lot of these things?” Genre fiction is evolving and developing. It’s not just shitty commercial novels for horny housewives and teen vampire romances anymore. We have stories about modern, everyday characters struggling with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, friendship and romance and family. We have characters that do things we don’t approve of, and characters who we root for as we watch them embark on this journey to find themselves, or redeem themselves, or reclaim their sanity. Are those not character-centric? Are those not introspective? Are those not layered? Do they not provide social and psychological commentary? A number of YA books come to mind: Mosquitoland by David Arnold, Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. Maybe the prospect of literary fiction versus genre fiction is just another one of those millenial wars, if we want to go down that road. Maybe it’s adults way of telling us that everything we’ve read and connected to over the years is of no merit and that we shouldn’t aspire to write like these people we’ve admired because it’s “commercial” and “shallow.” When in reality, I don’t see why we shouldn’t strive to be like these authors. I don’t see why we shouldn’t indulge in whatever our hearts desire in regards to writing. So what if we want to write about dystopias and dragons and demisexuals? Can we not be introspective and philanthropic in the midst of those? Can we not apply symbolism and social commentary onto horror fiction or high fantasy or YA? Is that not, dare I say, deeper than simply trying to tack poetic meaning onto the everyday, bland bullshit and call it a masterpiece? I’ll admit that there have been “literary fiction” short stories I’ve read so far that I have enjoyed, and that literary fiction does seem to work well for short stories, but I don’t know. I just don’t see why it’s considered so high class and superior when genre fiction does much of the same things and more, I feel. Just because it’s considered commercial doesn’t mean it’s any less worthy than the shit that’s funded by people with fancy degrees. True, not all genre fiction is great (*cough cough* Fifty Shades of Grey *cough cough*) but not all literary fiction is great, either. I don‘t know, man, maybe my youth just makes me biased, and maybe my youth just finds genre fiction more relateable right now but I just can’t help but wonder why there’s such a superiority complex when it comes to literary fiction, knocking genre fiction to the curb as if it’s worthless garbage. It just doesn’t make sense to me.

[torixus]

Sixteen Note on How To End A Life" by Late Chukwuemeka Akachi

Chukwuemeka Akachi who committed Suicide in UNN yesterday wrote this book before he died...  😢😢😢😢

"Sixteen Note  on How To End A Life"  16. I thought I would never write this story. 15. I’m trying. 14. “Sir, when was the last time you thought of killing yourself?” “Now” “Do you want to talk about it?” “Can we reschedule?” 13. Today I came home with a belly drenched in litres of petrol I forced down my throat. This story will never end, but it does have a beginning.  * My depression eats me patiently and washes me down with the sound of the silence in my bedroom. This is how I learn that when you stretch your body to occupy spaces, it weaves itself into a form of its own, another excuse to feel smaller each time you climb into your bed. 12. On the bus, the woman next to me didn’t seem to notice I probably wouldn’t be alive in the next thirty minutes. I thought when you want to kill yourself, you will be visibly marked. Everyone would notice. The driver waved me into his bus, after asking me my location, as if the petrol sitting in my stomach wasn’t enough to fuel his car all the way to the nearest cemetery. I didn’t tell him. Instead, I asked him to stop me at the Catholic Cathedral, I should find a therapist there. I thought he would see the sign. He is marked, the sign should say. Nobody saw it. I was dizzy and everything was becoming fuzzy. How could they not see that? God should have sent somebody. He/she/they should have stopped me. What kind of god lets a human-time-bomb, forged in litres of petrol, liquid fire, to walk into a bus and sit next to a woman thinking of dinner?  11. “Breathe. Breathe. I hope the couch is comfortable?”  “Should I turn off the air conditioner?”  “Why did you want to kill yourself?”  “Can you hear me, Sir?” 10. The church is the earliest memory I have of my childhood. Mum made us go to all the bible study sessions in the children’s ministry. In Wukari, Taraba state, where I grew up, the children’s ministry was much organised. There were series of classes that you had to pass through and they actually took exams. I don’t remember anything from those classes. Sunday school. Evening bible study. Monday classes. None. Maybe I was just too young. I remember the black fruit we plucked after services. My elder sister and my cousin. I don’t remember how we are related. I remember the pimples on my cousin’s face and how I stared at them whenever she bent to pick out fruits. They always seemed to be rotten by the time they fell. All I remember about my sister is the cheerful-coloured gowns she wore, with a hat to match each one. It was 2003 or so and I don’t know how old I was. I wasn’t up to six years old. I remember it in showers. Light showers. 9. “Would you say that your childhood was pleasant?”  “Why are you smiling? So it was pleasant then?” (Laughter)  * Growing up, I was taught how to laugh in-between the lines, in monosyllables that come off neat and harmless. Nobody taught me how to envy my skin or write love letters to myself or peace. I learnt everything I was taught I had to or I wouldn’t move to the next class 8. I don’t remember saying much. In church, at home. I say a little at school. I just remember being at those places. Not a single sentence. I was everywhere I was supposed to be, rather, my mum thought I was supposed to be, without leaving a trace. After the children’s Sunday services, we had to wait for the adults to dismiss. That is the only memory I have of the church. It was like floating in and out of places. Children running around, climbing cashew trees, picking rotten mangoes, tasting them, spitting them out, crying, letting themselves be consoled, wiping the tears, starting all over again. It was all like a silent movie to me. Only, I was in the cast. I ran, cried, did everything and never said anything. I wasn’t a quiet boy, I was just mute. 7. “Any memories you might want to share with me?” “Are you happy, Sir?”  “Let me help you?” 6. Onyinye. She was much older than I was, but she still, somehow, winded up beside me the whole time. We were together the way an ocean clings to a sinking ship. Once, she suggested we played father and mother, and then chose to be father. I remember her lying on the pew, where bibles were dropped in the children session, smiling down at me. Me: an abandoned child in a war zone, lying on the seat of the same pew, staring at this girl, who seemed to be just happy, lying there, saying nothing. I remember my ‘cousin’ calling to take me home. I don’t remember saying goodbye. * You know, moths have no choice than to flirt with flames. When the flames bite their wings, they call it exercise and apply first aid. It’s their destiny. 5. The first time I ever thought of killing myself was in Nsukka. I wanted pass any sharp thing through my body.  Dad stayed in Nsukka, Enugu state, alone. Whenever he visited, he would bring bread — even though mum sold bread at our store — and most importantly, avocados. Those were scarce in the north. Bread and avocado was his favourite too. At that time, one of them was sold for #50. My mother couldn’t sell avocados in our shop because our neighbour already did. The northerners didn’t ask for it anyway. Our shop was the first in a row of shops owned by Igbo people. Selling avocado would have been a waste of money. Only the Igbos who lived in our street, Akata Street, bought them and every other shop in that row sold it. I remembered my dad for avocados and hard luck. Each time he came, something bad happened to me. One night, my elder sister urinated in my bathing water and my mum made me use it. My sister had beaten me while we were alone at home. I don’t really know why she did that. I managed to run the few blocks it took to reach the shop. I cried so hard that my father got me a bottle of Sprite, and handed me some slices of bread. At night, my sister struck. My mother didn’t believe me. Maybe, she felt I was just being mischievous, and made me bathe with the water.  I remember crying. I remember the water and my sister’s urine washing the tears in joint mockery. Something bad happens whenever my father comes back, but I still wanted him to. Avocados.  No one asked if I wanted to move or not. Perhaps I was just too young. I don’t even remember packing my bags. But I remember the journey. I was sitting on my father’s lap in the seat closest to the window. We: my mom, sister, cousin and I used to visit my dad in Nsukka from time to time, but that was all it was, visits. I had already made home out of a strange land. My sister would have slapped me if she heard me call Wukari my home. This time, I was supposed to stay in Nsukka for a longer time. Maybe forever. I’m not sure how I felt about that. I hummed the few Hausa songs I learnt till I got tired. And then forgot, all of them. * Memories are lonely horse riders. They never stay too long in a new town. They are always on the road. I’m learning to love them without getting committed. 4. When I held the knife in our bedroom in Nsukka, I was standing next to the red cupboard that had cracked glasses. My father kept a couple of fancy ceramics we never used there, right next to the kitchen knife. It was on a Sunday morning. I had chicken pox and my dad rubbed a white lotion all over my body. Onyinye could be playing in a church, thousands of miles away. She could still be lying on that pew, saying nothing, smiling down at a different boy this time. Maybe, I was the sinking ship the ocean was trying to hold on to. When I forgot the Hausa songs we sang on the playground, I forgot faces too. I no longer remembered what she looked like. The only recurrent memory I had of her was a Gif file: a girl lying on a church pew, and a boy staring at her. Blankly. Not knowing what it means for a girl that age to climb a pew for him. The blade was sharp. I had watched my dad cut onions and peel avocadoes with it. I pointed it to my stomach in one slow movement and watched the tip flirt with my shirt buttons. I felt that if I died, all the people in the children’s ministry would have to attend. I didn’t win all those bible quizzes for nothing. All the teachers knew me. I had even seen the coordinator several times, talking to my mother after services. Onyinye would come. Everyone would come. I couldn’t get through with it each time. I always let the knife dance around my shirt for a while before I put it back. I repeated it every day. I can’t remember when I stopped trying, but I remember not telling anyone, including myself. That was the first time. 3. “Son, why then did you come all this way to this place if you will not speak to me?”  “Please say something, you have been mute since you asked for a reschedule?”  “Are you sure you don’t need a priest instead, because I’m just a therapist?”  “Ok, let’s reschedule. Thanks for coming” (Door closes) * I give my body options and it always chooses to baptize itself in seas because they say salt are water made flesh. But the salt my body chooses is an abusive lover who changes its taste so when I look in the mirror I tell myself that I need a new one and the only way to wear a new body is to die and when I say I die every day, it’s not a decision, it’s just my nature 2.  I‘m marked. The man in charge of the universe shouldn’t let living ghosts like me roam his planet. There was no reason for drinking the petrol. The only difference between today and the days I stood next to the red cupboard, knife in hand, is that I’m twenty. I am a final year student of a university in Nigeria, who is more interested in finding more ways to end his life, than actually living it. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t know I would try to end my life again. A rainbow can never wash off his colours. He will never be clean. I just walked into a filling station and asked for two litres of petrol. The attendant looked at me like I just walked out of the sky. I got the point and crossed the road to buy two nylons. She glanced furtively at me as the nozzle spat fuel. She was handing me my funeral clothes. Inadvertently. No one could see the mark. Every time I walk out of my bedroom I am aware that I’m an unforgiveable sin. People like me shouldn’t be allowed to walk free with all the monsters our depression carves into our brains. The attendant watched a sin walk free and did nothing about it. My mother, well, she will certainly cry. My sister never cries. She might just knit silently for two months till the grief slips through her needle. My father would just grunt for a week and go back to peeling avocadoes, with the same kitchen knife that flirted with my shirt buttons. My memory will never stick. I pity the therapists I have visited over the years. I never spoke to any of them. A moth will always dance to flames. I tried petrol because kerosene didn’t work out the last time. I threw up in my bedroom and the whole plan was gone. I was in second year then. Death is a safe pair of hands whispering my name, and I draw closer every day. A mere therapist’s questions can’t make me betray his trust. No bride leaves death at the altar. At twenty, there is not much difference between now, and the night my sister peed in my bathing water. I’m still the boy who doesn’t know how to shout at bullies. Who still falls for every girl in the playground (she doesn’t even have to lie on a pew). Who still floats into spaces without occupying them. Who leaves no traces. Who is mute. My bed feels smaller each time I lie on it. The boy never grew up. Life still pees in every bucket of water I use. My bathroom walls look on helplessly as the liquid mockery trickles into my mouth. My bathing water is always warm. Why can’t anyone see my mark? I never belonged here. I’m still too young to understand anything. The boy that watched a kitchen knife flirt with his buttons and said nothing still lives here. For some reason, the knife has not stopped flirting with me. We are in a long term relationship now. I lie on the bed and let the rumble in my stomach continue. This is going to be the last attempt. This will be a long night. It has been an hour since I left the therapist’s office, and I’m spoon-feeding this story to my journal. No one holds my pain more than he does. When I fall asleep, I’m never going to wake up again. I am ready to dream myself into a shiny casket.  This is the longest story I have ever written. Goodnight therapist, filling station attendant, driver, woman on the bus, sister, cousin, mum, dad, Onyinye. I forgive you. I’m the sin here. I’m unforgiveable. 1. I wake up. Again......... (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); via Blogger http://bit.ly/2WLJsOp