transient-musings

[transient-musings]

It’s going to be beautiful

Just sit down.

I can't.

Why not?

I don’t know, I just can’t.

He started pacing around the room.

Should we go out?

And do what?

I don’t know, eat something…

Like what?

What do you feel like eating?

Nothing… really.

Let’s just walk.

Walk? It’s raining!

She drew the curtain without looking out, raising her eyebrows at him.

How long now?

Five months, one week and… she looked at her watch …six days. Do you also need the hours?

No, I’m good.

He sat down. She looked outside. The rain was banging violently against the windowsill.

Tell me again, how much money do we have?

She took out her phone.

5,892 euros.

There’s no way I’m going back to work.

Yeah.

So we’re just gonna sit here until it hits?

Well, the money’s just enough to get there.

Should we buy the tickets?

We could.

You think there’ll be a lot of people there?

Probably.

We could rob a bank and live large until then.

I’m not risking getting caught and surviving.

Good point. Oh well.

He got up and went to the kitchen.

I’m gonna make a sandwich. Do you want one?

No. I’ll buy the plane tickets.

She stared at her phone.

I just realized, we can’t be the only ones going to the meteor blast zone.

He looked back.

It’s going to be beautiful.

Yeah… let’s just hope the scientists got the impact zone right.

[transient-musings]

Always come back to this

I love how I smile in the morning. I love how happy I am. I love that I can sleep well. I love that, given enough mental space, I can sleep for nine hours. I love all my little morning rituals. I love how I try to eat right. I love how I sometimes fail and devour a whole ice cream. I love how I negotiate with myself. I love how I try to take my time with everything that needs to be done. I love how I clean. I love how I don’t clean. I love how I try to accept people as they are. I love that I’ve understood work is not that important. I love how much peace a slow workday brings me in the evening. I love how I gently push myself toward my goals. I love how I accept myself as I am. I love how I don’t blame others. I love how I don’t blame myself. I love not being depressed, angry or mean to myself. I love how I’ve accepted growing older. I love how I set boundaries. I love how calm I am. I love how I don’t seek acceptance or love from strangers. I love that I draw. I love that I write. I love that I come up with ways to make money. I love that I know everything will be okay. I love the hope I feel. I love that I know how to think, analyze and decide with my feet firmly on the ground. I love that I try new things. I love traveling alone. I love being alone. I love being with myself. I love how I’ve learned to get myself excited about things and experiences I give myself. I love the schedules I build for myself and I can’t wait to fail at them. I love how gentle I am with myself. I love how I try to quiet my paranoia. I love coming home. I love how I daydream and accept that it’s just daydreaming. I love this January. I love that I’ve started reading again. I love how I give myself time. I love how I don’t judge myself. I love how I find new interests. I love this quiet I’ve achieved. I love the pain that brought me here. I love how proud I am of myself. I love who I’ve become. I love myself.

[transient-musings]

Present

"It's a hard truth to face," she thought while gazing into the distance. The song kept playing. The hardest part of getting clean is all the damn apologies.

"It's a rather shitty song," she said out loud, though she didn’t hear herself. She kept walking. No shame.

"Do I have to apologize to people?" She brushed the thought off, laughing. "People should apologize to me." And then it hit her. "I need to forgive myself."

She stopped in the middle of the road, all too aware of the fact that she was now definitely late for work. She tried to grasp this self-absolution and though she might have felt it for most of the things she did to herself, she didn’t feel it conquering her being like she had with self-worth a few weeks back.

"Interesting." She started walking again. The song started again. It's a new day, again. Everything is again. "How people do this day in, day out is truly puzzling to me."

She listened to the lyrics, again, and wondered what part she found so hard to exonerate. All those men she crushed? All that pain she physically inflicted on herself? The self-sabotage? The quick fix of sniffing or drinking something that never fixed anything? Listening to and praising people she should have never talked to? All the men who crushed her? Leaving? Not leaving? Not seeing what is now so clear? The lack of self-respect?

The answer wasn’t clear, so she walked into another day, thoughts and music aligned:

But I miss being stoned or drunk or anything but this fucking present.

[transient-musings]

Intellectualizing

It sneaks up on you, quietly but heavier and heavier each day. It could be the inner thought of your own failure or the inability to move forward. But maybe you're just tired. Or is being tired just a side effect?

Nothing seems worth it and though you try to reach for any grasp of fresh motivation, you slowly drown back to your original state. Sad. Not important. Common. Basic. Average. A never-ending fight between accepting defeat and fighting for some unknown and undiscovered territory that you know for a fact will just delay the inevitable attack of another depressive episode.

So you accept your weakness and you cushion your world, hoping it won't hit too hard, hoping that it's just a side effect of the crushing year you've been through, hoping your choice to slow down is a decision built on confidence, not another side effect of your disease.

You are deprived of logic, and yet you use nothing but reason to explain your actions. You feel, you want, you do. Now logic, math and analysis take care of the anxiety that needs a valid reason for your action.

"Healing comes in waves," "What comes up must come down"—these are just words that mask the truth about your innermost fear: you don't know how to live.

[transient-musings]

You're struggling with peace

Still, a buzz, deep down, a whisper, a subtle tremor of a dark and hidden voice rakes up the innermost parts of her unfaltering thoughts. It colludes, ever present, but never seen or fully acknowledged. It sends vivid but mysterious dreams that make her gasp in the middle of the night, not with pleasure as she would have loved to, but with malignancy and spite, revenge and grudge. She strives to feel it properly, to face this incubus, to scream at it, to take it by the throat and drown it in the baby blue pool of her newfound peace. 

But this elusive fuck slips through her strive at a formal, yet violent acquaintance. In less than a mere second, the pale sensation that it was ever there fades into oblivion, and she is once again left to ponder if it was even real.