Yesterday was one of those rare opportunities for me to interact with people outside my usual Berkeley/LA bubble.
There’s a definite freedom associated with meeting new people that I enjoy. It’s that metaphorical clean slate, a chance for me to establish who I am unhindered by the preconceived notions about my personality. But why? Why do I enjoy that freedom? Is it a sign that I have become dissatisfied with how people view me? Does it indicate that I want to change who I am, to control my actions, and thus manipulate their view? But how can I possibly feel this way when I’m no longer even sure of who I am or want to be?
Despite the surprising amount of time I put into analyzing the characters of people around me, I hardly spend enough time reflecting on who I am as a person. Recently I came to a realization, or rather, I was reminded of something that I was told at the start of my senior year. It’s something about my personality that I didn’t take that seriously, but the label seems to be following me, and I’m not sure that it’s something I want to be associated with who I am. I think it’s affected me more than I expected it to, because as I was meeting all these new people yesterday, I started to wonder how my words and actions were shaping their perceptions of me. It was a strange moment of self-awareness (and consciousness) that I think it’s important to have. And yet…I’m not sure that I want it. To be completely honest, I’ve prided myself on the fact that I’ve largely lived my life doing as I please regardless of how people would perceive (read: judge) me.
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I feel like I have more to say, but I’m not quite sure how to say it.
Maddened by her inability to define, to classify, to adequately describe the world around her…
my empty heart is craving love.
and i don’t mean to simply fuck or lust or have carnal desire.
i want love in its basest sense. i want conversations late into the night and the comfort of acceptance regardless of time or place or what i have done in the past. i want someone i can call at any time, night or day without feeling the slightest need to hesitate before i pick up the phone and start dialing. i want…
i want
you are just light on the water.
ephemeral and untouchable
yet you move me so
We write because there is an intangible, ever-present yearning that burns within us. We write because we are the bearers of a hundred thousand stories, real even when unreal. Because within fiction, we find truth. We write because we suffocate under this caul of silence. We were conceived with an indecipherable sigh of pleasure, born into this world with a cry of terror. Yet even this cry is a triumph, a victory, a sign that we are here and so full of life. And we grow and we learn and we categorize the world by these words that we can use to heal and break. Why do we write? We write because not to do so is inconceivable, because we need to express and know one another as much as we need to breathe. We write because we need to share unutterable secrets and hope that somewhere out there is another person who shares those same feelings, who thinks those same thoughts. We write because our souls are silent and deep within us, capable of expression only through language. We write because we are in love, in pain, overjoyed, furious. We write because we are starved. Starved for knowledge, for want of human connection on a level that is intimate and permanent. We write because we must.
In class, we had to write about a childhood space. Deluge of memories, and as I sit here in the front row, the smell of someone like a character from my childhood flooding my body with nostalgia.
Here it is. Take it. Breathe it in. Inhale deep breaths that consume until you suffocate with wonder. Here. Take it. Grab it, grasp it. Crush it between your fingers until it turns to dust. Drown in it. Burn it. Spread the ashes with heavy hands across your eyelids and down your sunken cheeks. Throw it to the wind. Leave your footprints across its surface, erase them. Destroy them. Here. Take. Consume it. Feel it spread through every inch of your being. Draw it like a poison from your body. Cry until you laugh until you cry. Here. Take it. It’s yours.
I’ve been so consumed by feeling. There’s this insatiable desire to travel, to be somewhere I’m not, to see the world and drown myself in new wonders. Every part of my being screams to move, to see, to feel, to do. I wonder how I can sit so still when these molten feelings are flowing, burning through me. I am a storm, a hurricane, a fierce battle barely contained within this quietly shifting body. I stare at my hands and graceless body and wonder how the very edges of myself are not blurred with frenzied movement. My very atoms are being pushed and pulled apart from one another in their need to escape. I think one day I’ll burst open in a cascade of emotion and inner turmoil, to finally be at peace, because how can I experience all these conflicting emotions and continue to exist? How can one person be made up of so many contradictions? I wonder how people can see me, hold me, when I’m afraid that at any moment I’ll effervesce into the air and float away on the wind.
I want.
I want salt on my lips and the smell of brine in the air. The way your hands never feel quite smooth after being in the water. A cool breeze to soothe the searing heat away from your body. The shocking splash of cold waves that toss and turn and confuse you. A million shades of blue. Steel and gray and cobalt and green and white foam. To run from the dark shades of seaweed in the water. To feel the sand rise and grow in small mounds around my feet. The ceaseless roar of crashing water. The screams and laughter of friends. To fight with the wind as I hold down the pages of my book. To fall asleep and wake to find tan lines zigzagging across my body. Chili cheese fries from the food shack. To throw things at, and not for, the seagulls. Drives back past the strawberry vendors, hands dancing through open windows. Sun setting behind our backs. Lying on the grass till night falls, jumping on trampolines, and sharing our secrets with the moon.
I long so dearly
I long very clearly
This year I seem to have been defined by my ‘otherness’ in a negative light. I think I had a really hard time coming to terms with this fact, because I am the kind of person that strives for everyone’s approval, which is silly, because that’s pretty much an impossibility in and of itself. Anyway, I need to accept the fact that regardless of how comfortable I am with myself, there are some people who won’t be comfortable with me. I will be isolated and placed in a separate category because I don’t subscribe to a particular religion, or political standpoint, or even act a certain way. I grew up always knowing this fact, but I think it was more difficult these past two semesters because I was regarded in this manner by people who I considered friends regardless of our differing viewpoints of the world. So to hear that despite time spent together, or personal feelings shared that I was first and foremost a non-(fill in the label here), really shocked me. I mean, categorization makes sense. It’s how we choose to analyze, organize, and understand the world and our interactions with it. But in a way I was made to feel inferior, and that truly hurt me.
And it still kind of does.
I am surrounded by the most extraordinary people.
neither malice
nor desire
simply friendship
and time
My heart is heavy and full.
Emotions seep through me, potent as wine. My body is saturated with feelings that my mind cannot find the adequate words to express. So I live inside myself and watch the world filtered through unsensing, unseeing eyes.
I want to travel the world and see terribly beautiful things.
