life

Teetering

/ fatesalchemist / Leave a comment
Ronan Furuta

This post has been a long time coming. The idea for it has been sitting in the back of my mind for months as I’ve been attempting to deal with my own mental health in the wake of the pervasive shock to my system that has occurred since I’ve been in this stateless place. Though through the process of thinking through this post, the contents and contexts have changed, I think the feelings generally still apply.

When I was young, I hated the rides and roller coasters at theme parks and fairs as the idea of being taken around a metal contraption you had no control over seemed like a silly notion to a kid who never felt in control of his own life. So any time any of my family or friends wanted to ride a ride, I would walk through the lines with them until it came time to take your place in the wagon, cart, or wheel. At that point, I would simply walk out the exit. Everyone in line would try and convince me to stay, telling me how not scary it really was and if I were to just try and ride, I would like the experience. However, I knew this to be untrue as every ride up to this point felt like an excruciating experience, and making the ride taller and faster did not make relate to making the experience any better for me. So I would leave, and in those few moments of freedom, I would watch and wonder what the other people must have been experiencing being taken around by these giant machines.
At these parks, I become fascinated with one ride in particular, round up. This ride consisted of a spinning disk surrounded by metal fences, usually with beautiful blinking lights on the outside. Every time the ride stopped, new people would file in and find a spot, and then slowly, the disk would spin like a top. Up and down, left and right, round and round again, as people felt themselves pushed back into the fence without so much as a strap or buckle. I would watch people go around, unable to move as this large machine tilted and teetered back and forth. Until sometime later, the ride would slow and come to a stop before starting all over again. I wasn’t so much fascinated with the experience of the ride but the motion of the machine as it would bring people up and down with so much ease creating the illusion of excitement with every lift but never actually changing the experience of those who are riding it. It is in these times when I would stand there watching the blinking lights go round and round, what it would be like wondering what it would be like to just spin forever.

I never really put much thought into the ups and downs of my life other than the occasional consideration as to whether the inconsistent but frequent tumults stem from avoidable circumstances or actions. It wasn’t until the stacking of traumas and tragedies that it felt thought that my own world began to teeter uncontrollably. These high highs would be followed by low lows, each success followed promptly by a disappointment. This moving back and forth became heavy, and I began to become scared of spikes that would throw my world into chaos.

Truthfully it felt like someone had their hand on my head and would push it under the water, only to bring me up to catch my breath. I was swaying, spinning, and losing my footing. Each day became a chore, and each night a relief. Life became like walking through water, getting up on instinct rather than motivation.

I can tell you that I didn’t realize how much my mind was spinning round and round until I finally got some medicine that let it stand still. I didn’t know how pressure accumulated and built upon me, crushing my body and my hopes and dreams. It was then that it felt like I had lost myself, and it made me wonder why I tried so hard in the first place. I lost my way; the spinning made me lose sight of the ground and the sky, for it all to become a blur that some invisible force kept me down. Each teeter gave me hope but then promptly dashed it. Things I could normally handle began to stack higher, and the impossibility of banal tasks made me sink lower. When these dark thoughts began to pervade my mind and my feelings, all my actions that I felt out of control and I wanted to disappear. To hopefully be thrown for the ride and survive or at least to stop this misery.

I don’t know how to escape the ride or if the medicine will let me off. These pills I take scare me because of how well they work. Knowing some external force is making my body feel normal again. It makes me worried that I will be stuck with them, forever unable to be me on my own. Dependent on something else to stop the spinning. I feel like I’m on that round-up machine that is beginning to slow, hoping now that I have the power to make it to the end. I don’t know what else I may experience, but I know I’m not cured. I feel my body still be heavy but at least I feel strong enough at the moment to lift it. Through it all it still feels like I’m still going round and round, watching the world teeter and twirl, and wishing I was still that kid watching from the fence, wondering what it would be like to spin forever.

Cold War Kids

/ fatesalchemist / Leave a comment
Water’s Edge – まぬが

People say that the cold war ended in 1991, but for me, it started in 1992.
The day I was born, the battlefield began, not with fighting and disruption but rather through a dissolution of what other kids find as a firm foundation to live life upon.

I do not remember this union, though I am told that it existed through pictures and memories of all those who had the opportunity to experience it’s ephemeral existence. No, for my sister and I, what we knew was shouting over the phone and proxy wars between two people who had said until death to us part but would like nothing more than to be apart at death.

I can almost perfectly recollect the wars that were fought using children as a weapon, swinging us back and forth, with each strike damaging and dulling our delicate mental health. To this day, I look around and wonder what little eccentricities may have bloomed from the battlefield of my mind. How many unexpected scars and traumas are waiting to be awakened in the myriad of moments I have yet to experience. With no way to determine or avoid distress used to brace myself constantly for the cataclysmic collision of conflicts that would crawl it’s way into my cranium.

I had been reflecting on this recently, about the way I never truly understood a sense of normalcy because my normal was made so askew that I believed mountains were valleys and valleys were mountains. Though I have since learned this lesson, I am left with this sense the “normal” life will never be within my grasp. Like a fish living in water, I will never fully understand the nature of the bird that was given a chance to fly.

I remember the days in and days out when I lost who I was, I lost choice, I lost breath, and most of all I lost all that was left. I became the puppet who you could pull the string and carry out a messy pantomime of what I believe to be a functioning human being. I remember the voice of those friends who told me that I would no longer be able to play with them because it was too hard to keep track of my schedule. I recollect all the opportunities that faded away because arranging a meeting became too much of a hassle. I still have engraved the moments I missed because I was not allowed to exist in a way that made sense. I lost so much I became obsessed with perserving all I could keep, but like sand on the beach, all that I could hold would ultimately wash away when the water comes in.

I wasn’t until after I returned home from college that I sought to find some solace and peace in the chaotic sprawl that had become my life. Even now, there are wounds all around from the damage done by everyone involved. Patterns of behaving that have no hope of a resolution. I find, though, that recognition of humanity in those superpowers that lead the fight as a way to cope with the travesties I experience growing up.

Though I recognize our faulty lives and acknowledge the inadequacies that pervade those who had a hand in shaping this situation, I can tell you that I still feel the sting of disappointment, even when the expectation is failure. Perhaps this is the last semblance of childish hope that stokes the light of a small candle within me.

I found acceptance in my unordinary life, though sometimes I wish things were easier. I may never know what it will be like to not have family drama or conflict, though I can be one to champion peace and understanding.

I can’t say every moment I lived was terrible, and I have nothing to look back to fondly, but like a flashing bulb, my dark memories still light up the ceiling as I lay in bed at night. I know that though the war may be over, its effects are long-lasting, even when I am thousands of miles away.

A Last Song For Duo

/ fatesalchemist / Leave a comment

I’m going to try and put into words, this experience made too ephemeral, this moment crafted premature, this time intended for never and not yet but arrived just the same. Oh Duo, for how I miss you. How dearly I cannot say for language falls short in constructions of eternity and the infinite. These memories and moments with you seer beneath my skin, for forgetting, is a sin and I intend to be a saint. Though I’m sure this prose is more for me than for you, these words stand as a small testament to you and our time together. Though I can’t hold you any longer, I hope that this passage will preserve a piece of you everlasting.

What can I truly say other than I miss your large bright green eyes. Oh, now they used to look at me like I was home. A place I feel for me I hardly know but for you was within me. This peace I had because I was able to provide for you something that I had long forgotten myself. This yearning, I feel and wish I would see them truly looking at me one more time. That love I felt when you would do was almost comedic in character because how could it have been? I had always felt so undeserved, but you paid no mind to my insecurities and faults.

It’s in that memory of laying with you, and how you revised the way I slept that I found peace. The way you insisted on laying between my legs felt so warm and weighty that in my absence, I cannot sleep. I burn for the way you used to keep me in bed long beyond my morning alarms. The way I would play tardy with you, and the world would pass us. I savor the moments for I was with you because for those moments, I felt whole with you in reach.

It’s in your soft fur that my fingers can still touch. The way you would acquiesce to my whims, begrudgingly but trusting. The peaceful confidence you displaced traversing the world. The way your brother relied upon you to make sure the sky was not falling, and that there was always a warm place to lay his head. The way I knew you would always come back around so I would never need to chase.

I wish I could wake to you. Those visions of it all being a terrible dream and that it was only a manifestation of a worry gone too far. For my days have gone to grey waiting for you to return through that front door that you left through. For that night I can’t escape, that stain on the concrete and grass; that deep red turned to various shades of rust and grey. Something broke inside for me that night, and I don’t know if it will ever be made right. I pray for you every night that you come home and pray that if you cannot that you at least are happy someplace else. Oh, how I miss you so much.

It then a tragedy of that night that these flashes of the pain of memory keep these bittersweet memories sufficiently somber. Through their experience, I become darkened further because how can a light like yours be put out. Like others in this situation, I blame myself, wishing I hadn’t let you out that night because I didn’t; you might still be here. I can’t escape you but nor do I want to. I just want the pain to finally subside so I can enjoy memories of you without this inexplicable dark from arising. A pain that is both a curse on my heart but also a blessing of your existence. I know with time, I will heal, but that will not make me yearn for your soft fur and heavy frame any less. It’s my arms I wish you would still be, wasting and watching days go by, making life a little easier and more worthwhile.

I remember when you first came home that I used to lay awake at night, making sure you were still breathing. I would sit there watching your tiny frame anxiously until I could see that hearty breath in and be relieved that you were still there. I would worry you would be gone from me any moment, but when that worry stopped you were gone, and I didn’t know how to pick up the pieces. That night I carried you and had hoped you were warm. I saw end the end of your breathing, and I felt you and your soft fur grow colder. I wish I knew to do more, but I was helpless in front of this fate.

It’s unfair, and I know life is never that way, but why did it have to be you. The blood on my clothes and the towel I wrapped you in, markers of a life that could not be spared. I suffer the trials and tribulations of the world knowing the punishment should fall on me but in a split moment, the world collapsed around you for no more reason than it feels to prolong a certain sense of wretchedness. I would take the world on my back to protect you from harm and yet I could not protect you from danger and chance. What purpose could lie in this, a lesson that could not learn some other way. That is to say I miss you, so dearly that don’t have words to describe. I would trade it all for you and I wish you were still here. I wish above all else that could see those bright green eyes look at me again and have those mornings with you. Oh for how much I love you Duo, I always have.

At the end of this, what I wish I could tell you is
until the stars burn out.
and the sky goes dark
I will always love you

Goodbye Duo, I didn’t deserve you, but you came to me anyways. I will take care of Hero and everything else. And I hope, deep in the purest place in my heart, to see you again.

Hoping for Wishes and Wishing for Hope

/ fatesalchemist / Leave a comment
Snow by Pascal Campion

I don’t know how to speak to hope, with the words I put to the page never seeming enough. The only reason I want to speak to hope in the first place is that I’ve been thinking about hope, or the lack thereof, in both myself and the world around me. It’s like gravity pulling dreams and aspirations down to the ground and burying them beneath the soil. It’s like a force is speaking little messages to people, telling them not to hope or pray for wishes because wishes are for the lucky and hope is for the foolish.

But what is hope except for a wish not yet to come, a part of our heart speaks out so loudly that ask us to take a chance on the world and its wonders and believe that more is possible? Hope is what the architect sees before the building, the engineer sees before the machine. Hope is an extension of the dreams but… dangerous thinking that is, because to aspire to leave your neck out to get cleaved and those who forsake hope, survivors of the dream guillotine, don’t want to get hurt again.

I can understand this apprehension and this desire to abandon hope. As you get older the world continues to test the willingness to hope and more of your life feels as if it were to be a graveyard for dreams. Those who are lucky, seem to be blessed in some way by the universe to continue forward unimpeded, but the for the rest of us, it feels as if every day we spend climbing mountains.

I’ve lost hope in people and institutions while I’ve been living in this stateless place. Maybe I’ve been an idealist all this time because I’ve been fortunate enough to guard my heart and hope enough not to get ravaged by the hands of time. Now my heart lays exposed and bloodied by the experiences of the past few years, marred and marked about the failings of hope and effort. I’m sure there are some that will believe that the death of ideals and dreams will give way to a clearer view of reality. Those who believe that setting the bar low only provides a more accurate view of the universe. The people who call themselves realists have been beaten and broken by the cost of dreams, see the world as one broken place and that if they dare to dream that dreams would be dashed and only pain would persist.

Maybe this is why I can’t stop myself from caring because I stop caring about this world and others that I give way to the death of my dreaming. That if I lose all hope and persist entirely without the expectations of others or the future, all that would be left is a shell of myself who goes through the motions without an end in sight. That it’s this foolish hope about the change in the world, that someday we find can find a better way and my efforts mean something that keeps me looking forward and coming back to the table.

It’s hard though, to hope in a place that has done nothing but balks at my dreaming and my aspirations. To call only for persistence through extraordinary circumstances as a solution. To feel isolated, alone, and not to be taken seriously. I can understand why I have so much hurt with hope because hope is the knife that continues to make me bleed. It’s the belief that things will get better here and that all my experiences have been a string of bad luck and not the result of my failings. Hope has me believe that the future is calling, and as long as I work towards it, things may go my way. It’s hard to continue to be as I feel hope as I experience the cleave of dream guillotine regularly. At times it feels as if these people and places are avatars of the universe acting like an executioner of my dreams.

I know the power of hope, though small at times, keeps me persisting ever longer with the belief that my continued progress will get me to eventually meet my dreams. I haven’t given up but man… it’s been hard, and at times I find myself hoping for wishes and wishing for hope.

More Morose than Most

/ fatesalchemist / Leave a comment
Moon Sea – Sun Kai

It’s difficult, this wandering mind that speaks of despair and death followed by feelings that prance and plague the heart and soul with solemn thoughts and wicked words. It is the invasive conceptions of a traumatized mind that form an inescapable umbra casting shadows in the light and swallowing hope whole. It is cruel premonitions of a life steeped in inadequacy that encroach like a predator starved for prey, slowly and with great care, only to strike right at my throat, choking me with metaphor and simile until I feel myself grasping for breath. I fear these moments because it leads me to believe the floodgates on my feelings have been loosed, and that I will forever feel that dreams of death will always taste a little sweet.

It scares me late at night or worse, during the day when I feel this crippling sense of lowness. This feeling that through all my toil, I am unequivocally bound for a life of ephemeral mediocrity followed but the subsequent oblivion of being forgotten. It paralyzes me, drowning me in this waking nightmare about a time that has never come and still yet never may be. The visions appear to me in the visage of a well-worn memory, as if to be assured premonitions warning me about the future that is to come. It sours my mood and makes me believe fate is a foe insurmountable.

It speaks to these insecurities of mine that those around me never put me in their mind. That conversations are short, and feelings are even shorter. That I am minuscule and momentary to the experience of those who are meant to serve as compatriots for a time on spaceship earth. It makes me read between the lines and question all statements. To take every action, movement, song, and verse as evidence of my accusatory paranoia. Though I override these thoughts and beliefs, I grow weary of fighting with myself to come home exhausted and unable to sleep.

It’s a menagerie of experiences that culminate to inexorable episode of multitudes of meloncoly. I try to see with eyes unclouded, but wounds in my heart remind me that this place I exist may never be as I want to see it. I have become attuned to my world, and I find it darker than the halls path I walk at night. This cold place makes this feeling echo loud and makes the noose tighten slightly around my dream.

These feelings come in ways and waves that I don’t know how to fend. I may have let too much in to be free of these feelings for the rest of my life. For now, I try and rest and write my way through it in hopes that by the time the morning comes that I can once again start again.

The memory of days and nights over the longest weeks of my life – Part 2

/ fatesalchemist / Leave a comment

qs70795iozv41

The memory of days and nights over the longest weeks of my life – Part 1

“Keep an open mind and open heart, you are here to attack the problem” I told myself. There I found myself once again on the other side of the screen waiting for this cataclysm to be lifted. For me to take the pain and the punishment that needed to be dished out as was a natural part of the learning process. It was there though, staring at me with its red eye that I knew this was no longer ab,out listening and understanding, this was about commanding and accusing. I sat there, listening until there was nothing left to say, and talking when words needed to be spoken but no more. The sentencing for my supposed crimes came crashing down and washed over me. These words were fatalistic, having already given up the hope of a future, or the respect once held.

No sooner had it started did it finish, but this time, these words left me not in a place of sadness and despair, but utter fru, station. A fuse was lit as the arguments and comments made echoed through my mind. What was clear is that this wasn’t over, but I didn’t know where to go. After it all, I sat there on my front porch calling the people I knew I could trust, trying to figure out what my next steps were.

The long days and long nights continued with finals making it all the worse. My eyes continue to burn as I pieced together all I could to make my life work. Even when the weekend hit, if I wasn’t resting I was working trying to find shelter in this hailstorm. I found solace in the voices of my friends but the music of the night was one of discord and difficulty. Those late-nigh,t hours were there for contemplating my circumstances, and that early morning sun to question my existence.

By the time Monday hit, I was ready for what was to come and what I had to do. It was in those moments that the final piece of validation came through, that all of this pain and anguish was not the result of a normal sequence of events but from a downpour of extracurricular madness. I spent the next few days organizing myself, working, and steeling myself for what might come. Tests and papers kept me busy, and life kept moving. Soon enough the day had come for a second reckoning, a moment to face the music once more. I walked in there the best I could, as brave as I could because I found my reason to keep on fighting.

Life hardly ever gives us clear cut beginnings or ends, and though things continue beyond when we would like what is important is finding the reasons to keep moving forward. I can’t say that I’ve recovered fully from my experiences or that they are truly over but I can say that I will keep fighting. Lessons are not always easy but with an open mind they will never be wasted.

Here are to the long days and nights to come, and the fighting spirit we all hold inside.

The memory of days and nights over the longest weeks of my life – Part 1

/ fatesalchemist / Leave a comment

I had that reoccurring dream again.
The one where I just disappear.
A quiet evaporation leaving no traces behind.
Gone. Poof. No More. The many years and memories dissipating along with me.
It’s not the disappearance that makes this vision unsettling. It’s the quiet moment that descends on the world as the dust of my existence falls into the sky. The subtle light of my existence goes out, but the world keeps moving forward. No mountains shattered, no storms called, and no seas calmed. Just the world as it’s always been, just simply without me. As if nothing had changed and that mark I meant to leave simply faded away like water in the sun.
I had that reoccurring dream today, but where do I go from here.

j108uaq334x41

It started with words, sent to me with the intent to punish and harm. A morning shattered in a moment from reading the keys of someone else’s keystrokes. The reality I thought I had been building so fervently had crumbled from just a look.

It’s was hard to keep composure, confusion was my first response than fear and sadness. An inner turmoil began to build the pit of my stomach, like a black hole sucking in everything and making my life feel so heavy. What had I done to deserve all of these feelings flooding in?  My mind unraveled looking for answers, but as I traveled down the rabbit hole, all I found was more darkness. It had been months worth of work, late-night hours, and early morning suns that seemed all but wasted by the comments of another. What was it all worth? These feelings of tire, sadness, and grief that I had been putting off were unrecognized by the perceived enormity of a slight which I had never sent.

My heart burned, my head felt heavy, my hands already tired and spent. I had been slowly drowning over weeks, trying to keep my head above the water, and this pushed me under the waves. Why now? We were almost to the finish line, and yet it all fell apart before we arrived.

I reach out as I could, trying to understand what brought me here to this place. Was I crazy in all of this? Is all that was happening a reckoning I had simply put off for many years, a reckoning that would finally come to take me to the place back down to the place I truly belonged. That long day turned into a long night, and I was sad when the morning came as it meant that what had just happened wasn’t just simply a nightmare of my own creation but the reality that would not go away.

The dissonance got worse, and so did these feelings inside. I needed to keep strong and productive, but the feeling of kissing the front end of a fender grew slowly. Heavy thoughts and feelings thrived on the shattering of the pillars of glass I had been standing on, falling among the shards of broken confidence and self-respect. I had to deal with these feelings, these circumstances, while also trying to hobble together projects and work. Finals that I could not put off were simply the weight to ensure I could not move and adequately deal with the circumstances I found myself. Each prod and poke, however benign, felt like daggers in my side. It used all my strength to keep myself from imploding at any given second. So much energy to keep my composure as much as I could.

It was then I found myself in the forest. Contemplating the value of my existence and ability. It was among the trees and leaves that I broke down, someplace no one could see. Why was I here if all of this would explode in my face at the drop of a pin? Was I so bad as to warrant all of this heartache? Many questions came but not many answers, aside from the ones whose voice was that of pain. I talked and talked with those around me, which lifted these weights enough to breathe. For that, I am truly grateful. If I had found myself truly alone, I do not know what would have come to be.

Day became night, and when I rose in the morning it was to a sweet song of sympathy. Echoing the voice of my friend and family, it put my heart at ease to know that the circumstances I found myself were unusual if not problematic but not from the way I had originally known. It had given me types of solace to know that perhaps this may turn out well.

So many scenarios had played through my head, but perhaps there was a light at the end of the tunnel. As the day pressed on, so did my desire to face these things head-on. In the evening, I head more voices telling me that things will be okay. I was nervous, heartbroken, but nothing else persistent. I was ready to work on myself, and on the problem. All I wanted was to be better and to learn as much as I could. That is what I am here for.

I planned and thought. I considered all of this and opened myself up to feedback. Soon enough, the day had come. The day where I would have to face the music came, and I meticulously prepared everything I could so that when I tuned in, I was ready to work on whatever I needed to do going forward.

That day, which I thought would be the end of all of this turned out to be only moving to another chapter in this long and arduous process. That day when I arrived, sparked the start of something else entirely. These long weeks had just begun.

To Be Continued…

 

A Dreamless Sleep

/ fatesalchemist / Leave a comment

 

UH7Du64.jpg

Isolations – Felicia Chiao

 

The past few weeks I haven’t been able to write, at least not for this blog. Work, homework, work, global pandemic, and more work have kept me from being able to sit down and put words on the page, to spread my thoughts across digital space in any meaningful way.

So what has happened in the course of several weeks deep into a quarantine?

Me sitting at my dining room table, on my computer, having to act as if the world wasn’t falling apart. Seeing fewer and fewer people as the streets become barren, all except those people delivering those much-needed packages to our mandatory hermits. The quiet returning to the city as the people stay situated in their homes. A silent panic that is not communicated in case it may carry the disease along with it. I’ve been watching the world pass by from that chair, day and night as I slowly lose sleep over all the work I’ve been saddled with. Spending my days in a with my eyes burning with no dreams to be found.

I can’t avoid the reality of my situation, but in the same way, I also can’t fully process it. The world is happening but it doesn’t totally fee,l like anything is really moving. Like a world in stasis, waiting for someone to call out surprise, just kidding, it was all just a ruse. But it’s not, none of it is, it’s not some illusion that will be ripped away with time. No, this is real, the damages are real, the people are real, the hurt is real.

I’ve been sitting here, staring at this screen, counting the pixels as the clock strikes 4 and 5am, knowing I should be sleeping but knowing I just can’t. It’s these dreamless nights that I’ve been experiencing because I have not time for dreaming. Life is going too fast and too slow all at once. Nothing is moving but I am still drowning in the work and the things going on. Coming up for air whenever I can but swallowing water just the same. People are scared and for good reason. Not just for themselves but for their family. It hurts, just for me but the people I know, not able to hug or to mend, not able to console or to grieve. It’s not just breaking apart society, it’s breaking apart community and thats the hardest part.

We fight hard against these waves that will keep us away from one another. Soon enough it will all be just a piece, of history we will tell our children. But here I am, at home, for another day, wishing for the world outside, knowing always it can kill me, just a little bit more efficiently this time around.

 

Placeholder

/ fatesalchemist / Leave a comment

s28279uvw0o41.jpg

Shelter In Place – GroundedSpaceMan

It was some time ago, when listening to a podcast about the intricacies of emotion, I came to a deeper understanding of how about how the words shape the experience we have. The ability to describe how we feel goes a long way for how we treat these experiences and the process in how we cope with these experiences.

It’s then I have a word problem, an inability to describe how I feel simply. Maybe it’s because it’s a multitude of many things that are happening right, now but my feelings are stunted and unresolved because of my inability to put my finger on exactly what I am going through.

It mixture, a muddle of things to be honest. A sadness, an unease, an accomplishment, but also a sense nihilism. A confused sort of thing that comes together more like a grey cloud than anything clear cut. I don’t know what to do or what the right thing is, my body and brain are in incongruency trying to get a grip on myself as the world seems to be falling apart. It is then I had wished for the guise of routine to save me from the confusion only to be thrown to the lions, unrooted and left to hoist myself up the best I can.

For now, I used just a place holder of _______, a blank space that will have to do in the meantime as I have to continue moving forward. It doesn’t make the nights easier or the mornings shorter. What it does do is let me acknowledge it exists and to keep moving forward. I may not find the word, but I at least need to spend time healing.

AutoCorrect

/ fatesalchemist / Leave a comment

 

 

It’s both a strength and a weakness, to look inside oneself and continually tinker with what is found inside. That is because we will never find satiation with whatever configuration we end up on, just a slow and arduous process of trying to make myself more resilient, more efficient, and generally better as a result of continually opening myself to self-improvement and critique, at times though feeling like I need to scrap the whole thing.

It brings up to a couple issues though, continuing to be malleable does lend itself to being able to adapt and change based on my needs for the moment and knowledge I’ve managed to ascertain, still, it doesn’t allow for a strict continuity of self. This leads to problems of identity down the line as I have a hard time knowing who I am, and what exactly makes me… me.

It’s a great question which can’t be answered simply.

As a psychologist, I have to concede these external factors that we constantly contend with will continually contour who we are to ultimately are. There is a sense of automaticity to it, an unknown force that will pull strings to move our arms and legs, leaving us only to make sense of what we’ve done only after we have done it. We defend it so harshly only to come to find no rhyme or reason for our actions or why we spent so much time defending it so fervently.

I found myself here, looking back at my actions, my words as I was dead tired listening to someone else speak. It was the culmination of many conversations that I have had part of in preceding months that surfaced finally in my brain. Moments before I could not tell you what that person was talking about, but everything began to resonate as the words they spoke on a topic I was only half interested became the most engrossing thing in the world. Not for what they were saying but simply because, for that moment, I had a realization about myself, my action, and my history.

I have too many of these moments, which downplays the vibrant and special nature of them. My whole life had come into crystal clear clarity, and moments in memory were highlighting like beaconing these behaviors that I have been doing my whole life. It’s when I finally can see through the fog and smoke that I  understand a new perspective, get away from myself for a moment, and look critically at my actions. It’s taking in that new perspective and see myself and the world from a different place. It feels like expanding.

It’s about choice at the end of the day, to be able to choose which parts of myself to keep and which ones to tinker away. Finding the bright parts of my parents, my friends, and my role models within myself, and taking those unsavory bits and tinker them away into something so much better. I am not perfect but I continue to be better and that quality that makes me, me. The eternal striving.

It’s a pursuit of greater space that I find also the answer to this continuity question with the ever-changing self. I do not matter where their piece of me comes, only that I make them my own as I have them. To move away from the autocorrection in my nature to something much more deliberate in craft and character. To build myself so when the machine runs, it runs smoothly and in the right way.  It’s wanting to move away from allowing things to happen and making them happen. To cut the strings and move on my own, even if automatically, to know it was a choice.

That what it comes down to, that my autocorrect is at least speaking the same language as me, so when I do find fault I know it’s me and not someone else.