Journal Highlights
‘writing with this pencil is tiring but so is living so here goes nothing’
from may, a classic.
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| me (left) my daughter, 2018 journal (right) |
i am a walking talking form of the human contradictory sometimes known as uncontrollably oversharing and immensely fearing vulnerability. which means for all my trust issues, i still love talking about myself a great deal. so i’m making an entire post highlighting some of my journal entries of 2018 as quotes, also in part hoping to somewhat reflect on the past year.
(disclaimer: this is an abridged, carefully curated version of my journal highlights because some things are just way too personal to be putting out on the internet for anyone to see.)
february
february is one of my favourite months and i think because my expectations are always too hight, i get really underwhelmed by the events actually unfolding in it.
1. ‘my body is an old man’s home
crooked and
reeking of memories that we don’t speak of anymore’
thought i do remember writing this, i have no idea what that was about. i cannot bring the feeling i was feeling at that moment to mind. i guess that is one of the reasons i journal after all; to get rid of the thoughts in my head, which are too often way too much.
2. ‘that’s it. that’s it. i don’t want any flare. i’m only asking for love.’
this, on the other, i do remember better. the journal entry which this quote is from developed to be a poem called intifada which i performed as spoken word in february or march i think. it rings true still when i read it. i never want any flare because i’m an anxious being, only love through and through.
3. ‘what about the tragic parabolic trajectory of my dopamine? what do you call a trajectory that keeps going down? no regard for gravity’
i hate to shatter my own metaphors but there is something scientifically wrong with this; surely there is no trajectory that keeps going down, and if there was it’d have nothing to do with gravity. at least i think so. this was written in a class i was too tired to focus in, there was some sort of a projectile problem we were supposed to be understanding and honestly, i couldn’t care less.
4. ‘i wanna sleep so bad, i’m not tired. my body is not a wreck and this world is no sea. i’m not drowning and i’m not tired. but i’m so tired.
this is the part where i get pissed off at how poor of communication tools words are’
this last one was written on my birthday last year. when i feel like words are not doing justice to how i’m feeling my brain makes up poetic metaphors it seems, and when i’m not satisfied with the portrayal still, i become quite contradictory. i believe what i was trying to say is ‘i’m tired but not in the conventional meaning of the word and i have no other word to describe what i’m feeling and i’m angry at the futility of words’.
5. ‘yesterday i was dressed like a bruise, lately i’ve been feeling like one anyway, that is, tender and hurting (but not necessarily blue).’
this was a recurring feeling. it still feels close to me, also like a bruise, like it, as a memory, is also tender and hurting and i’d rather not go poking around it.
may
6. ‘it looks like i’m going to be stuck here forever, and by here i mean this body (but also family, house, country, world, mind mind mind) and by stuck i mean living’
there’s nothing really to be said about this except that i have issues, like every other human being on this planet. and when i talk about them i feel like i’m oversimplifying them and so i write shit like that. and just sometimes shit like that feels so true to my core that it shakes my whole world and i can’t stop thinking about it. thinking about the one time i could almost successfully put what i’m feeling into words.
7. ‘writing with this pencil is tiring but so is living so here goes nothing’
from may, a classic. sometimes the cynical part of me is truly what keeps me going. the dark humour and sarcasm, all the dryness of cynicism truly truly truly brings a smile to my face when nothing else can.
june
8. ‘stop talking about my hair’
after i shaved my head, there were a lot of people talking about it, both the act of shaving my head and the lack of hair on my head, and it was getting on my nerves. very much. those were the same people telling me that me not shaving every other part of my body made me less of a woman. coincidence much? some people just have patriarchal ideologies so ingrained in their brains.
not to be all holier than thou but you know, it’d be lovely if people stopped telling me what to do with my body.
i didn’t write much in the summer break, i think. i travelled a lot and spent a lot of time with family and friends and very little time writing.
so the rest goes like:
9. ‘there’s nothing better than buttered toast’
this is september 20th. i had many great revelations that summer. butter toast was one of them. what a true saviour, you know.
10. ‘here’s my gut
here’s the beehive that resides in it.
here’s my lung
and the puddle of sour milk spilled in it’
we’re back to anxiety! i believe this was part of a poem i wrote some time in august.
november
11. ‘this
idle
emotion
of
fear
drives
my
heart
into
hades’
hands’
did this mean anything to me when i wrote it? probably. do i understand this at all now? not in the slightest. do i have any f*cking clue why i wrote it like that? nope
this acts as a reminder that most of what i write, though at the moment feels so clear and almost tangible to me, will ultimately be lost to time.
happy writing.
december
12. “the internet wasn’t as a big of a force in contemporary life as it is now
and that’s what worries me
is that
Facebook and Reddit and Instagram and Twitter control so much of the collective amount of human attention that is available.”
—John Green, ‘All of Them, Including LinkedIn’, on the Dear Hank and John podcast.
Dear Hank and John has been a blessing to me every week. i have been watching vlogbrothers for years now but i have only started listening to the podcast a year or so ago. i learn so much from both john and hank, i truly love them and look up to them, and i owe so much of my growth as a person, in part, to them.
this is one the many quotes by the green brothers that stuck with me. even though subconsciously aware of it, when it was said out loud i was like ‘oh shit’.
i have been taking months long social media breaks since 2017 and this is a constant reminder of why i should keep doing that, even if on a smaller scale, every now and then.
now that it’s the new year i’ve already started a new journal that i’ve been using almost everyday. it’s a comfort, having something to throw at whatever’s going on in my head. because it’s a lot. and it’s loud. and it’s obsessive. i honestly could do with getting rid of some of my thoughts.
here’s to writing as a way to get the trash out of my brain.
DFTBA.
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