personal

Anna

Curled up like a ball, hands clutching her knees close to her body, she huddled in a corner, blankets heaped over her form. She felt as if she were blowing away. The room swayed around her, lurching, trying to get her to move, to give up on herself. She couldn’t do it. She wanted to, so bad, but she couldn’t. She wanted to keep what little of herself she managed to retain in that little corner.

The room whispered to her all manner of things – promises of the good to follow when she let herself go, unveiling of the beauty she’d find, guarantees of the necessity of the situation. She tried not to listen; she tried to convince herself it wasn’t true. She knew the room’s urging voice would only sabotage her. She knew she had to concentrate on holding on, and it would have to be enough.

But she couldn’t help hearing the whispers, and she didn’t know how long she could hold herself before she’d break, letting her flesh go to waste, dazzled by false beauty and empty promises.

Long Nails – What a Chore!

Friday night! Time to go out and meet people! Right? Right. So what does one do on this night of all nights of the week? One would want to look good, look cool, look awesome. A small, but crucial detail arises – WHAT should I do with my nails?!

If you’re like me, you really like the idea of long nails, but maintaining it is a bit more of a problem. My nails go all over the place – sometimes they’re long and pretty, but even then they’re not filed well and half the time I have two weeks-old polish on them. Like now. Now would definitely be one of those times. Some little red patches adorn these untended, unhealthy nails of mine, and it looks frankly quite horrendous.

Well, that’s easily fixable. Pull out the nail polish remover and scrub scrub scrub away. Amazing how persistent this icky old nail polish is… Ah! There, it’s all off now, though there are still red stains on my cuticles. Oh well, I’m putting black nail polish on anyway. And my pinky-nails will be green. Because I’m weird. Applying nail polish now, steady and easy… Left hand done! Now to the right. This is harder, my left hand is a bit shaky, but ah, there, relatively OK looking.

Now, I just need to be careful not to put my nails near anything… Ho-hum. Oh dang, how did THAT happen?! Urgh, now I have to do that nail all over again! Out comes the nail polish remover again…

Does this happen to you? Half the time I get so frustrated at my ruined nail polish that I just scrub all of it off and say to hell with it.

Two Years

My father died exactly two years ago. I can’t express how much I miss him. Really, I can’t. He was just the most amazing human being, and the most amazing father. He treated my brother and me as human beings, not as children, never as children. He respected us, and found so much to love and be proud of in us, which in turn made us happy, because we respected and loved him so very much.

His presence was so strong, even if he was silent. He always had the radio on, sometimes to good music and sometimes to bad, annoying music or loud and obnoxious talk shows. He never listened when it was on – he was always reading the paper or writing when the radio was on. But he didn’t like the house being silent. I think the most touching moments I’d ever seen my parents in was when a song they both loved came on, and they would start dancing together, bopping around and kissing and embarrassing my brother and I. I realize now, of course, that that was wonderful, so beautiful, so miraculous for two people to have been married for so long and to still have been so much in love.

My largest and most horrifying fear is that I’ll forget my father one day. Forget how it felt to walk hand in hand with him when I was little, forget how it was to be mad at him, forget how it was when he sang me his lullaby, forget how it was to watch him doing exercises and then sitting down to watch the news, forget how he read my papers for school and helped me improve them, forget the smell of his cigarettes and coffee in the morning and the cake or cookie he ate as his breakfast. I haven’t forgotten yet, no, but what if I will one day?

Reverent Reverie

Sometimes sleep is the best medicine. No matter what happens, it’s something the body will do naturally, something that can’t be fought or resisted. Sleep tells us things as well – when we don’t sleep well, it’s because we’re worried about something, or something is bothering us without our realizing it. When bad dreams awake us, shaking and sweating, in the middle of the night, more often than not some unknown or unheeded fear is coming to light or finding a way out so as not to worry us anymore.

And when we’re tired – ah! Such a feeling. It can be awful, being tired to the bone. But viewed the right way, it can be wonderful. If you let yourself surrender to it – not even by sleeping, but just by accepting it – you may feel a languor and a calmness steal over your body in a way that is completely unique. When we’re sick, or not feeling well, our body warns us of it by making us weaker, more tired, more in need of sleep. Again, in these situations being tired can feel wonderful, a deep knowledge that crawling into bed now will help, it will rest your body and mind and make you stronger to fight the germs in you.

Truly, sleep is the best medicine.

The Meaning of Life

42.
Har har.
The meaning of life is to find the meaning of life, so when you’ve found the meaning of life, you don’t have a meaning to your life anymore.
Har har.

The truth, as far as I’m concerned anyway, is that there is no meaning to life other than what we make of it. Life is something we’re in all the time, we cannot step outside of it and look at it objectively, finding in it some grand pattern that is the meaning of it.
The meaning of life is your first kiss, your first love, the way your mother looked at you in second grade when you were on stage, the way your brother helped push you on the swing, the way you feel in your best friend’s arms, your favorite coffee brand, your habits. The meaning of life is how you cried when your grandfather died, how you withstood the pain of your arm breaking, the way you toiled to get a good grade, a good job. The meaning of life is your dog barking when you come home, the trivial anger at someone shoving in front of you in line, the way you rant about the things that you’re passionate about and the way you save money every month to be able to pay rent. The meaning of life is LIVING it. What else could it be?

Painfully Wonderful

There is something especially wonderful about the pleasures one can find in states of great pain. Pain is not a thing that most of us appreciate, nor should we. It’s something our body does to let us know something is wrong – we’re stepping on glass, the music is too loud, we’re straining our muscles too much.

However, migraines are a pain which no one really understands. Scientists and doctors haven’t quite figured out why people get them or how to cure them. As a sufferer of such pains, I will describe them briefly, as they are similar to many other pains that we can have: Constant pain, seeming to go on forever, causing panic and calm alternately. It is a pain which heightens the senses, causing every glimmer of light to be blinding and ever stir of the breeze to be deafening. It is a pain that makes you aware of the blood beating a steady, constant path in your body.

And it is a pain that can make you appreciate things more than you thought possible. When in a state of great pain, every single relief is a blessing, a thing to rejoice over. The slightest chill in your arms make you smile as the heat of the pain eases for a moment. The feeling of calm that washes over you as you fall asleep makes you sigh with gratitude. The distraction a book offers makes you feel languid and serene as you concentrate on something outside of your pain. These things are what make bearable the knowledge that you live with a shadow of immense pain ready to pour over you at any given moment.

Little Dramas

It’s so strange how, as the time goes by, I learn more and more about my co-workers and their dramatic little lives. I feel rather privleged that I’m considered trustworthy enough to become privy to their lives. Then again, I also know that they know as well as I do that we’re not really friends, and we’ll never really be friends. We’re just people who are stuck together for a few hours a day and we better try to make conversation and get along or we’ll turn those hours into hell. But now, onto some of the dramas!

A. lives with her husband and her twenty month-old daughter in a small apartment with her mother-in-law. She is the mother-in-law from hell, the real classic kind, and A’s life is a misery. She’s trying to raise money to be able to move out of their already, and she seems to be blossoming in her job, having something of her own for the first time in years.

I. was religious. She met a boy, fell in love, and slept with him. She had iregularities with her period after that, and fainted from loss of blood. She was hospitalized and through this her mother learned somehow that I. lost her virginty. I. was then shunned completely, and at twenty, she already lives alone and completely supports herself out of necessity.

Last but not least, we have S. who is in love with a man who probably won’t be able to ever give her what she wants, which is commitment. At her birthday party a few days ago, her friends surprised her by bringing him, after they hadn’t seen each other for months. They slept together, and then she realized he’s the same as he always was, cannot commit and doesn’t realize that he’s with someone who’s willing to give her all. And so, mere days after her hope was egnited, it was cruely extinguished again.

Winter Romance

Rain patters down on the plastic roof outside the window. The breeze comes through the slats, fresh and delicious, bearing with it a smell of clean, sweet moisture. The sounds of the street are slightly muted, everything growing hushed in the soft rain. Even buses, with their monstrous thundering and their creaking halts, sound soft and polite as the drops come down lightly from the wispy gray clouds.

As the drizzle grows into a rain, the light seems brighter, more cheery. The small comforts of home – the sweatshirt flung on the back of the chair, the cat curled up in a ball on the couch – become more cozy and endearing by far. Even as the rain turns into a respectable downpour, the home becomes the perfect nest, wonderfully familiar, all of it softer around the edges somehow.

If only the rain could go on all night, it would accompany the soft light of the reading lamp and the soft rustle of pages as they are lovingly turned in their spine. A rain of this sort can only herald the sweetest and most comfortable of sleeps. If only it would go on all night.

But alas, all good things come to an end, and quickly, all too quickly, the autumn rain disappears, leaving behind it a comforting memory, a slight shiver of joy and a disappointed girl, who wanted to stay up all night reading with the rain.

Castles in the Sky

Only lately have I actually realized what dream is forming slowly but surely in my mind. It didn’t start out as something I was aware of, but rather just an idea that floated around the empty grey spaces at the back of my mind – you know, the place where your chores usually go and from which you fish out weird random facts once in a while, like “Curiosity killed the cat” isn’t the full proverb, it’s “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.”

The thing that I realized is this: I have had this blog for a month and a half now, perhaps even a bit more. The days I haven’t written have been very few, and then it was because I wasn’t at home and had no way to write that day. More and more, writing is becoming part of my daily routine. I might not write all that well, I might not be particularly interesting, but writing is becoming more and more a part of my life.

The dreams that this fact arouses send me into a quiet frenzy, the likes of which I haven’t had in a long time. I still love the idea of acting and I still love the idea of singing. I still love the thousand-and-one professions I wish I could shove into a lifetime. But slowly, the thought of being able to actually write for a living one day – even if it is twenty years in the future – makes me feel as if my stomach is about to explode in a burst of confetti and joy.

A Hellish Night Indeed

Drenched in sweat, tears leaking down my face, I woke up repeatedly from the most horrid night’s sleep I’ve had in memory. Tossing and turning and throwing blankets off and pulling them back on again, I could not get any rest.

In the books, in my lovely, loved books, the heroes always sleep badly before a battle, before a grand decision, when there’s a monarch’s life on the line or at least a wedding or something else significant the next day. For me? None of these. Today is not a special day, is not supposed to be anything special or life-altering or even exciting. No offense to Monday, the 20th of October.

So why? I have no answer. I just know that of all the nightmarish nights that I’ve endured – and I’ve had my fair share, believe me – this was the worst. I dreamt of my boyfriend dying, I dreamt of every mundane chore and how I cried through it because of his death. When I woke up from the dream, it took my a full ten minutes of lying in bed and sobbing to realize that it was just a dream. Even after that, I spent the next four hours until my alarm was to ring waking time and again thinking I was late, thinking it was a different day, panicking that it was afternoon and I’d missed the bus I’m to take.

Small wonder then, that I feel like I’ve been up all night running.