so take my hands and come with me, we will change reality

So much has happened in May that I haven’t the heart or the strength to write about it all. Most of it involves people and situations that I couldn’t possibly write about here without sending my internal censor into overdrive. I’m forced to reconsider my usual approach to life: if I can’t write with honesty about the things happening to me, what is the point of this blog at all?

Family, a wedding, new family members, happy cousinhood, drama, drunkenness and happiness. That’s what May has been all about :)

Yes, I can see that I make my slacking off at work conspicuous by the absence of any work stories. One week of work now, and then New Zealand beckons!

but now it’s just another show, and you leave ‘em laughing when you go

[Both Sides Now - Joni Mitchell]

I first heard this song when I watched Love Actually. I don’t listen to it all the time, or even frequently, but in certain moods, every word she says appears impossibly, painfully true.

I’m dramatic, it’s true. My inner life outshines my outer life in variety, richness and extremity of emotions. So yes, I tend to spend a lot of time contemplating, debating and analysing things to pieces in the confines of my head. This will probably never change, no matter how many years and birthday cakes pass. Anyway, the point of this isn’t to shine the spotlight on my inner drama queen.

As clichéd as it sounds, it takes a whole lot of courage to live by your convictions and the more days I wake up to, the more this message is driven home. And I suppose, when circumstances make you feel like it would be so much easier to give in, a great deal less painful to go along with things, even if you aren’t convinced… that’s when you have to hold on for dear life.

Because without those convictions, beliefs, delusions and hopes, what chance have you got at living an honest life?

I need something more. Something stronger, something so irrepressibly vital that it brooks no diffidence or doubt. Anything else would just be wrong.

Also:

Source: prettylittlefantasy.tumblr.com via Vintage Books on Pinterest

you’ve got to soldier on

Solitude may just be my natural state.

A man who is ‘a university in himself to me’. Yes, that’s what I want. Someone who makes apathy and silence impossible.

and I come here to talk, I hope you understand

[Green Eyes - Coldplay]

I’ve always been wary of meeting new people. I’ve made a study of passing off intense shyness as arrogant self-involvement. Most of the time, I’m terrified of being found ugly, dull or stupid. I don’t suppose it’s much different for anyone else, really, but those awkward pauses, the scrabbling about for something to say in the hope that it will provoke laughter or at the very least, attention, are states I’m not fond of. I was discussing our last years of high school with a friend recently, and he was surprised by how vastly different I am today to the person I was then. I believe it’s the same for anyone – if we didn’t grow and change and evolve, we might as well be dead! – but rereading emails or diaries I wrote at 15 is intensely embarrassing, to the point where I don’t even recognise the person who wrote them.

But there’s something intoxicating about being introduced to new people, and that’s an aspect I’ve only discovered in the last two or three years. It helps, I suppose that we’re not all horny adolescents, with exaggerated opinions of ourselves that cause us to immediately consider everyone less intelligent and engaging. But there’s such an air of possibility about making new acquaintances that outweighs the intense, crushing fear of putting oneself out there. The potential for discovering common passions, ideas and kindred spirits always should, I think, be the thing that forces us to get out there and make an effort.

Long may it continue!

“It gave her the same feeling Sundays used to give her – calm, quiet and dignified.”

[Quote from: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/644826/19/
The_Official_Fanfiction_University_of_Middleearth]

Sundays. When I was thirteen, right upto when I was fifteen or so, Sundays were when I had unlimited access to the Internet. I used to go up to the office on the second floor of our house, and read fanfiction, catch up on the latest Lord of the Rings gossip, and listen to Enya on repeat. I used to stalk Orlando Bloom mercilessly, print out pictures of Legolas to stick on my walls, and generally revel in the drowsiness that comes with freshly-washed hair. Those days seem so long ago now that they feel like the memories of a different person.

I watched To Kill a Mockingbird today and fell in love with Gregory Peck all over again. After a fairly inane morning that was a throwback to two and a half years ago because it involved fragmented conversations about the-night-that-was (in which I took no part!), it was a relief to do something that at least felt grown up and meaningful. That’s probably what I hate most about being back in this city – the constant, niggling, scratchy feeling that I’m going backwards, regressing into a girl I no longer am. It’s the same people, the same equations, the same feeling that I am somehow on a different page from everyone else.

It’s a Saturday night and what am I doing? Finishing up some work that won’t wait till Monday, eating Maggi, reading a fanfic I read nearly five years ago just to see if it still holds up to scrutiny, and listening to Adele. I listen to people’s stories of drinking themselves silly, of snorting cocaine and smoking weed, of hitting on various women and men, of their laughable attempts at living life to the fullest and I feel like somehow, I’ve got a better deal than everyone else.

I’m always questioning what happiness is. Is it that glowing moment of pure recognition when you’re reading and you realise that the author’s voice and yours are one? Is it the instant of perfect contentment sitting in a car, listening to a song you like? Smiling at a stranger staring at you in a way you instinctively recognise as flattering? Laughing with a friend over a silly joke that’s the funniest thing in the world for five minutes? Watching a scene in a tv show or a movie that leaves you shaking? A conversation that makes you question everything you believed in?

Maybe it’s when you stop, look at yourself in the mirror and think – this is who I am, this is who I want to be, and that’s all there ever is to count on.

P.S: I’m going to Barcelona in September, Singapore in December – that’s three countries and seven cities this year! It can only get better.