Have you spent evenings that turned to nights and then days where all you could do was read meaningless internet articles to feel some semblance of relatability to the rest of world? Have you ever felt hollow emptiness when the words blurred screen flickered into darkness like your eyelids because exhaustion made them too heavy?
It's been close to four months since I last wrote something. And even though the words have been creating a prickling itch in my palms for the last couple of weeks, I've just run away from this ultimate form of confrontation with myself because I hate confrontation with the people I care about. I care about myself. I care about the people I love. So I run, I run from them and I run from myself, I bottle it up and I seek refuge in animation films that I've already watched. I seek fleeting comfort in a listicle which will make a point that I temporarily relate to.
Patterns. They are everywhere. Maybe they had always been there, and it is now that I have begun to notice them. Patterns in the people I choose to keep close, patterns in the people who hurt me, and how they hurt me, patterns in my coping mechanisms, patterns in relationships and how they turn out that I wish didn't exist - but they do.
Someone told me it was karma, because it seemed too much of a coincidence that people in my life had such similar life stories. Someone said it was the cultural baggage we come from. We will all have these back stories, these disagreements with our parents, these scarring experiences by the time we are in our mid-twenties. That's why we relate. Someone said, "It's just your luck. Accept it."
Have you ever, solitude-lover, felt afraid to unlock your bedroom and step out alone because you felt crushing loneliness on the inside? Have you realized how unfair it is to make one person your rock and put the entire weight of your expectations on their human shoulders, because the sets of shoulders that shared those burdens dwindled one by one?
Have you felt an alienation so deep that you want to crawl out of your skin and reverse the life events that led to this moment? Have you ever wanted to reverse every single memory you hold close because right at this minute you couldn't give a rat's ass about all those people who made it so special because you don't seem special enough to them right now? Are they fucking blind? Or are you expecting too much? Have you tried distracting yourself with work and failed miserably? Has the vast music collection you pride yourself on failed you too because all those thumping beats and lilting melodies made you feel nothing?
Distractions. That is what it has come down to. Lame, sad, pathetic distractions. Browsing hours, reading screens and choking about woes of 90 minute lives of cartoon characters because they seem so much nicer than their real life counterparts. Exposition-conflict-resolution. Simple. A happy ending. Box after box of tissues which reek of deja vu even though there's no such tragedy seems to have struck. Get some half-hearted work done, because hey you're too cowardly to say "fuck you" to those goddamn deadlines.
And guess what? That's a pattern too.
And guess what? That's a pattern too.
